


What Endured

by Revans_Mask



Series: Ashara Shepard [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, Fluff, Minor Character Death, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:07:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 59,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revans_Mask/pseuds/Revans_Mask
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine years after the Reaper War and three and a half years after the events of Where They Travelled, the Normandy crew are building new lives for themselves.  However, there are still old foes to be reckoned with and major decisions to be made.  The final part of the Ashara Shepard saga.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the Precipice

“Shepard, Ashley needs you and Liara to be downstairs in about 10 minutes.”

We’ll be there,” Ashara Shepard manages to gasp, her fingers clutching at her wife’s crest as she tries to avoid crying out.  When she mercifully hears the sound of Tali walking away from the door, she exhales, moaning as Liara continues tonguing her opening while her thumb strokes Shepard’s clit.  Her wife looks so sexy like this, naked, her other hand working between her own legs while her mouth enthusiastically licks Ashara, that within seconds, all thought of the interruption is banished from her head.           

Bracing herself against the wall, clad only in her Alliance dress jacket, the former Spectre can already feel herself nearing the edge.  When Liara looks up at her, her eyes black with desire, Ashara just nods in urgent agreement.  A particularly powerful wave of lust hits her alongside Liara’s love, and her knees start to buckle as she feels the ghost of Liara’s touch on her own clit.

 “Goddess, you taste good, Ashara,” the asari whispers huskily in her mind, and when her tongue dips deeper inside her, Shepard tumbles over the brink, pulling her wife with her into an intense climax.

As their shared pleasure ebbs, Liara pulls herself to her feet, sensuously licking her lips clean, and Shepard forces herself to stand as well, kissing her wife deeply.  “What got into you, Liara?”, she laughs.  “One minute you were coming out of the shower, and the next…”

Her wife gives her a guileless smile, one that’s never stopped melting her heart, even if the asari behind it may be a trifle less innocent then when they first met.  “You know much I love you in your dress blues.”

Ashara’s thoughts flash back to their wedding night, and a flush of renewed desire runs through her.  “I do,” she beams, reaching over to pull Liara into another long, deep kiss, one which she only breaks off because she knows that if she doesn’t, they’ll end up losing a few hours they don’t have. 

“Besides,” Liara adds, heading over to the sink to wash her hands, “With Moira playing with Ashley’s nieces and nephews, it seemed a shame to waste our brief moment of privacy.”

“Fair point,” Shepard agrees.  “But now,” she chides playfully, “You better get dressed or else we’ll have to explain to Ash why we’re late.”

“I would rather avoid that,” the asari agrees, pulling on her panties before taking her dress down off it’s hanger.

“Good, then.”  Shepard smiles, putting back on her pants and tucking in her shirt.  “Whatever the reason for it,” she adds, brushing her fingers affectionately across Liara’s soft cheek, “I can never object when you make me feel that good.”

“I would think not,” Liara grins, giving her a final kiss.  “Now, we should go.”

Ashara takes her wife’s hand in her own.  “I think that’s my line.”

 

Tali throws up her hands.  “Why does this thing have to be so complicated?”

They hadn’t been downstairs for more than ten seconds before Liara’s bondmate had been swarmed by a host of Ashley’s relatives, all wanting to meet the galaxy’s most famous war hero.  That left Liara and Tali as the one’s assisting the Spectre, and the quarian’s frustration with the task at hand is showing.

Ashley by contrast seems amused.  “You’re telling me that you’ve overhauled the _Normandy’_ s drive core but you can’t figure out how to fasten a wedding dress?”

“You do realize,” Liara points out, “That this isn’t the sort of thing a quarian would have a great deal of practice with.”  She leans over, trying to figure out the complex system of pins involved in fastening the garment.  “Of course,” she adds, trying to keep the naughty smile off of her face, “You could have simply worn your dress uniform as Shepard did for our wedding.”

“I guess I felt like being old-fashioned.  Plus, I already took over the _Normandy_ from her.  I don’t have to follow her example all the time.”

“That is reasonable,” Liara agrees, finding the correct fastener at last, “And you do look quite lovely in that dress.”

“Thanks, Liara.”  She pauses for a second.  “Actually, do you mind if I ask you something about that?”

“Of course.”

“When an asari says that somebody looks good, what do they mean?”

“I am not certain what you are referring to.”

“It’s just that, with your people… Well, your dad was bonded with Benezia, but Shepard told me that she also had a daughter with a hanar.  How could she have been attracted to two things that looked so different?”

“We asari are not the only ones who can find many different types of things beautiful.  Surely you can feel that way about a ship, or a sunset, or a painting.”

“Sure,” she chuckles, “But I wouldn’t want to marry the _Normandy_.”

“Nor would an asari.  Like you, we find something beautiful because it is a good example of whatever it is.  The qualities one looks for in a krogan are different than those that would be appealing in a human.  But the physical alone does not explain our attractions.  Because our mating process involves a merging of thoughts, those physical qualities have to be combined with a mind that we would want to do that with.”

The asari is pretty sure Tali is grinning beneath her helmet when she replies, “So you’re saying that Shepard has a sexy brain?”

Liara smiles coyly.  “You have no idea.”

“No idea about what?”  Shepard has finally made her way into the dressing room.  “You look great by the way, Ash.”

“Your sexy brain,” Tali laughs.

“Sure, why not?”  Shepard plants a quick kiss on the asari’s lips.  “I managed to get away once Wrex showed up,” she explains to Liara.  “I think a lot of Ashley’s relatives have never met a krogan before and he was taking the opportunity to play the swaggering bounty hunter.”

“I’m just glad I talked him out of bringing his whole entourage.”  Ashley shakes her head.  “Half of Clan Urdnot filling out the guest list isn’t exactly what I had in mind for my wedding.”  Indeed, with Bakara unable to get away from her duties at the same time as Wrex, the krogan leader has limited himself to a few aides and security people, though Liara doubts her old friend needs much guarding.

“Hey,” Shepard teases her, “You could’ve just had a nice quiet, ceremony on the _Normandy_ like me.”

“Only if I never wanted to go come back to Earth again.  My family would’ve killed me for eloping.  I think half of them had started to believe I’d never settle down at all.”

Liara puts on her best serious information broker face.  “Ashley may not be joking, Shepard.  I have seen her relative’s service records and some of them are quite dangerous.”

“Seriously, Liara?”  Ashley glares at her in mock outrage.  “You’ve been running background checks on my family?”

Shepard shrugs.  “She ran background checks on all the guests.”

“I thought you gave up being the Shadow Broker,” Tali inquires.

“Indeed, but that does not mean that I relinquished all of my contacts.”  She held onto some useful political and military agents to aid Ashara in her diplomatic work, some commercial contacts for business purposes, and a handful of underworld informants she uses to help preempt particularly serious crimes.  As for the rest, some she had passed off to other trusted information brokers such as Feron, some she dropped, and a few she felt were too dangerous she had picked up by the relevant authorities.  “I wanted to make sure that no one spoils this day for you, Ashley.”

“I appreciate it.  Still, I’ll be glad to be done with all of this cloak and dagger stuff”

Shepard is surprised by her implied meaning.  “You’re retiring?”

“Just from the Spectres, not the Alliance.  They’ve been trying to make me an admiral for a few years now and I’m going to finally let them.  It’ll be tough not being in the field any more, but it’ll give me a chance to start a family while I’m still relatively young.”

“I am happy for you,” Liara smiles.  She and Ashara are planning on having another daughter or two of their own, but not for a while yet.  A “Biological clock,” is not something that she’ll have to worry about for many a century and with Shepard’s extended lifespan continuing to hold up very well, they have plenty of time.

“Me too,” Shepard adds, “But what’ll happen to the _Normandy_ after you’re gone?”

Tali chimes in.  “The Council is thinking of turning it into a museum.”

“A museum?”  Her bondmate is shocked.  “They want to turn the _Normandy_ into a damn museum?!”

“That’s what I thought at first too,” Tali says comfortingly, “But on reflection I think that it may be appropriate.  We did incredible things on that ship.  It is part of history now.”

Shepard calms down.  “I guess it is at that.  It’s just strange is all.  That was our home, where we fought, where people died.”

Liara kisses her softly.  “And they should be remembered.”

“All right,” she concedes.  “You two have made your point.  I just want it to be tasteful.  None of those damn ‘Battle-damaged Shepard with Biotic Punch,’ action figures being sold in the gift shop.”

“Hey, careful there skipper,” Ashley laughs, “Pretty soon Moira will be asking for one of her own.”

“Probably,” Shepard snorts.  “Now come on,” she says with a smirk,  “Let’s get you packed off to that desk job.”

           

Eric Chernenko tosses the spent cigarette to the ground next to the other butts, his black boot extinguishing its failing flame.

“You know those things will kill you.”

“I should be so lucky.”  He shoots an impatient glance down the road before checking the settings on the device in his hand.  “When the fuck is this car going to get here anyway?”

The shorter Asian woman standing next to him rolls her eyes.  “We’ve waited this long.  Stop acting like your dick is going to fall off if takes another few minutes.”

“Whatever, Yin.”  She’s right though he doesn’t intend to give her the satisfaction of admitting it.  They’ve spent years dreaming about this operation, but their target has been on the move too much, and too often ended up in places they couldn’t effectively operate.  Now, at last, the wedding of fucking Ashley Williams has given them the opportunity they’ve been waiting for.  They may not walk away from this job, but what of it?  It’s not like they have shit else to live for.


	2. Into the Depths

Down in the hotel lobby, Moira smiles when she sees them, dashing away from Ashley’s nieces and nephews, but instead of stopping when she reaches her parents, the little asari runs headfirst into Ashara’s leg with a cry of “Heabutt!”  At four, she can talk, but only in single words or short phrases, and her pronunciation is still a work in progress.  Of course, that’s not exactly Liara’s main concern right now. 

“Heabutt!”, Moria cries again, but this time Shepard is ready for her, scooping up their daughter in her arms for a short timeout and a lecture on the reasons not to ram your head into your parents.

While Ashara tries to settle Moira down, Liara casts a suspicious eye on the probable source of this new behavior: Urdnot Wrex, currently swapping war stories with a bearded Williams uncle named Gavin if she recalls her files correctly.  “Wrex,” the information broker says sternly, “What exactly have you been teaching my daughter?”

The krogan chief’s booming laugh fills the lobby.  “I’m just getting her in touch with her heritage, Liara.  She is one-eighth krogan after all.”

Liara throws her hands up in a show of frustration.  “How many times have I told you that is not how it works?  Besides, I am sure that in due time, Shepard will teach her all that she needs to know about combat.”

“So her uncle Wrex was just giving her a head start.”

“In due time,” Liara repeats, adding “Many years from now,” for emphasis, but she can’t avoid cracking a small smile at his antics.  It’s nice to see Wrex like this, not having to be the leader of the krogan, just the old friend that she served with many years ago.

Shepard has gotten Moira more or less calmed down and she walks her over to Liara.  Her daughter gives Liara’s leg an enthusiastic hug and the information broker’s smile broadens as she reaches down to return the gesture.  Sometimes, these little moments, these small reminders of the life she has now, still take her breath away.  “Did you have a good time playing with Ashley’s relatives, Moira?”

“Yes,” she enthuses.  “Play ball.”

“I am glad,”  Liara replies warmly before turning back to her bondmate.  “We should get to the car.  Ashley will not be pleased if we cause her to be late for her own wedding. ”

“Probably not,” Shepard chuckles.  “I think the last time Ash was late for something, it involved a Reaper.”

           

The church on Sirona is rather average, the sort of nice but not overly-fancy building one finds on a lot of mid-size colony worlds, but it’s not until she walks into the basilica that Shepard is able to put her finger on why she feels strange being here.   Her family was never religious, so they didn’t attend the one on Mindoir on normal occasions.  Indeed, she thinks, counting the time in her head, it’s probably been 27 years since she was last in a church, not since…

_…She had been so in love at the time of her sister’s wedding, or at least she thought she was.  Emily Durban had been her first real girlfriend, and the naïve fifteen-year-old girl that Ashara had been was half-convinced that it would be the two of them up there on the altar in a few years.  She just hoped that when her wedding day came, she’d look half as pretty as her sister. Elegant and graceful, with long golden hair, Jessica had been so lovely that a teen still lanky from her growth spurt had envied her a little bit._

_Ashara had always found her sister’s fiancé Brad, a clerk with the colonial government, a bit dull but Jessica loved him, and all in all, it had been quite a day.  She’d pestered Brad’s friend Colin Frakes for tales of his time as a cargo ship pilot, laughing so hard that she thought she might pass out when he pantomimed what a drunken turian looked like. At one point, Ashara had tried to dance with Emily, tripping over her own feet and burying her face in her girlfriend’s long brown hair in embarrassment when her little sister Eliza made fun of her clumsiness.  She cheered as loudly as anyone when the bride and groom had their first kiss.  And most importantly, she’d had no idea that this was one of the last times that her whole family would get to celebrate anything together._

_It was just over a year later that the batarians came and blew her happy, sheltered life straight to hell.  She and Emily weren’t together when it happened, having split up over high school bullshit she can’t even remember the details of anymore.  Still, it had been to her house that Ashara had headed after the attack came.  She’d been out in the fields when it started, but even from there, she could tell her family’s home was gone, consumed in fire from the sky and waves of batarians, so she ran to Emily’s parent’s place on the outskirts of town, desperate to save someone, to find some part of her life that she could keep from the flames._

_She only got as far as the lake when the batarian saw her.  He must’ve had seventy-five pounds on her, and a gun, and training, and all she had was good instincts, the element of surprise, and a whole hell of a lot of rage.  He’d been cocky, convinced that this little girl was no threat, and when he ordered her to lie down on the ground so that he could bind her, the last thing he probably expected was for her to hurl herself straight at him instead.  The gun flew from his hand, and though his knife bit into her side when she scrambled for it, she managed to hold on.  The recoil from the first shot stunned her for an instant, but the bullet lodged in his shoulder stopped him longer.  She fired again and again, pumping rounds into his skull long past the point when he was dead.  Only when the pistol finally overheated had the weapon dropped from her trembling hands._

_Afterwards, she’d collapsed on the ground, bleeding and shaking, but still alive.  From there, the memories got fuzzy, pain and grief clouding her thoughts. She’d tried to get back up again and keep moving but she hadn’t made it a hundred yards before she fell once more on the banks of the lake, which was where the Alliance patrol found her a day and a half later..._

Shepard feels Liara’s hand squeeze hers.  “Where are you, love?  You seem far away.”

“I was.”  She shakes her head, clearing the cobwebs out of her brain.  In the first years after the attack, she often had to fight to keep the thoughts of that day from overwhelming her.  Such moments are much rarer now, part of a life long gone, but she’ll always remember what she lost.   “Just old memories.  I’m okay.”

“Good.” Her wife gives her a loving kiss on the cheek before adding with a grin, “Because your usual throng of admirers appears to be on the way.”

Liara’s not kidding.  While this wedding doesn’t qualify as a full-blown _Normandy_ reunion, quite of few of her old crew are here.  Ashley’s waiting in another room with her Maid of Honor, Tali, which leaves Wrex, James, and even Garrus, who’s dragged himself away from Omega for the first time in ages, plus Sam and her wife, Joker, and Doctor Chakwas.  Throw in several members of Ashley’s new crew and a host of relatives, their numbers somewhat diminished by the war but still quite plentiful, and the bride’s side of the aisle is pretty full.

It’s Samantha and Nelia who reach them first.  “Aw, look at you,” the former comm specialist coos at Moira, kneeling down next to the little asari.  “You are so big now.”  The couple had visited Shepard and Liara on Thessia shortly after the incident with the leviathans, but back then her daughter had been a baby not even able to walk as opposed to the energetic little dynamo she’s turned into.

“Hi!”, says Moira brightly.  “Who’re you?”

“This is your mom and dad’s friend Sam,” Shepard informs her.

“Sam!”, Moira exclaims, tugging on the fabric of Samantha’s blue gown.

Liara smiles affably at Nelia. “It is a pleasure to see you again.” 

“You too, Doctor.”  The two asari have very different personalities, Liara a scientist at heart while Nelia is a saleswoman, but they get along well in spite of it, their shared experience of being bonded to humans giving them some common ground.  Liara looks down at Samantha playing with Moira.  “Have you two considered having daughters of your own?”

“Oh, eventually.  Business takes up too much of our time these days though, so I guess she’ll just have to get her parental thrills vicariously for now.”

Before Shepard can consider saying something, she’s distracted by Joker’s arrival.  “Shepard!  Check it out.  An actual suit.  I haven’t worn one of these in pretty much ever.”

“Well, you look very sharp.  Listen, Ashley told me the big news about the _Normandy_.  What do you think you’re going to do next?  I’m sure any other ship in the fleet would be happy to have you.”

“Nah,” He laughs, “It wouldn’t be the same.  It’s the private sector for me.  Got a cushy test pilot job all lined up plus, once I’m out of the Alliance, I can get that sweet, sweet endorsement money.  I think a flight simulator featuring the pilot of the _Normandy_ should sell pretty well.  I mean, maybe not ‘Travels With the Prothean’ well, but still nicely enough.”

Shepard beams with pride at the mention of her wife’s book.  Her collaboration with Javik is still topping the non-fiction best-seller lists over a year after it was published, though the asari has donated most of her profits to help preserve endangered prothean ruins.  “Liara did excellent work on that.”

“Having the only living prothean for a co-author and the galaxy’s greatest hero writing the preface probably didn’t hurt either.”

“Probably not,” she agrees with a laugh.

“And speaking of endorsements,” he adds, “Have you noticed how buggy Mako Assault III is?  They really need to release a patch, especially for the Feros section.”

The sound of the tank’s name gets Liara’s attention.  “Honestly, Joker, I cannot believe you would even play that thing.”

“You forget,” he grins evilly, “I never had to ride in it, just laugh at the rest of you when you came back green at the gills.”

Her wife rolls her eyes.  “In that event, you can think of those glitches as simulating the frustration that the rest of us experienced having to put up with that insufferable machine.”

Mercifully, before the conversation can turn to her own role as the Mako’s driver, Shepard’s omni-tool buzzes.  “Ash.  What’s up?  You almost ready for your big entrance?”

“That’s the problem, skipper.  Michael isn’t here yet.”

Damn it, she’s right.  He was supposed to be riding over from the hotel with a number of his old N-7 war buddies, but surveying the room, none of them seem to have arrived.  “I’m sure he hasn’t bailed on you,” she tries to reassure her,  “He’d never live it down, and I do mean that literally.”

“That’s why I’m a little worried that maybe it’s something…”

“Hold on.”  Shepard and the rest of the crowd in the basilica turn, their attention drawn by the sight of a figure stumbling through the main doors of the church.  It is not however, Ashley’s fiancé who appears there, but rather the slim form of a blood-covered salarian that staggers forward, before collapsing prostrate on the floor.


	3. Needless Cruelty

The salarian collapses to the floor, and the whole church erupts in confusion, everyone talking at once as people jostle each other in an effort to get a clear view of what’s going on.  Fortunately, Shepard has plenty of practice making herself heard under chaotic conditions and her commanding voice rings out above the din, “Everybody stand back.  Make way for the doctor.”

The crowd parts for Doctor Chakwas and while she rushes to the fallen salarian’s side, the feeling of Liara’s hand on her back gets Ashara’s attention.  “Shepard, I recognize that salarian.  His name is Varek, and he’s one of Michael’s teammates.”

Shit.  They were all supposed to be together.  Shepard takes a deep breath.  “Okay, tell Ashley to get down here.  I’m going to see what I can find out.”

Making her way to the doors of the basilica, Ashara joins Doctor Chakwas.  The salarian is still conscious but appears dazed; barely moving while the doctor examines his bloody body.  “How bad does it look?”

“My initial diagnosis is that he was caught in an explosion, but though he will require treatment, I don’t think his injuries will prove fatal.”

That’s something, she supposes.  “Call emergency services, but I need to talk to him first.  He was with Michael and the rest of his team.”

“Very well,” the doctor replies, concern for her patient and the rest of missing guests warring in her thoughts, “But you will have to be brief.”

Chakwas makes the call on her omni-tool while Ashara turns to the salarian, placing a hand on his shoulder to help focus him.  “Varek, listen to me.  It’s Shepard.  I know you’re hurt and help is on the way, but I need you to tell me what happened.”

Varek takes a pained breath, his large brown eyes looking into her pale green ones.  “Bomb.  Hit the car.  Don’t know who.  They were… they were shooting survivors.  Cloaked, got away, got…”

She has more questions, but before she can ask them, the salarian slides down, the last of his strength spent.  Rising to her feet, Shepard surveys the church just as Ashley and Tali run down into the room.  She’s going to want a team to head with her to the bomb site, which presumably is somewhere on the way between the hotel and the church. Unfortunately, most of the people here aren’t armed, which could be a problem if the attackers are still there.  At least her dress uniform has a holster for her Paladin…

“Listen up,” she barks out, “There’s been an attack.  Michael and his guests may be in danger.  Wrex, Tali, James, you’re with me.”  Vega has a pistol as well, Wrex is sure to have brought a weapon of some kind, to say nothing of his biotics, and Tali’s suit gives her options.  “Liara, I need you coordinating the flow of information.  Garrus, Magnus, lock things down here at the church just in case there’s more trouble on the way.”

Thankfully, most of her people fall into line out of habit, but as she starts to leave the church, Ashley yells out a frantic protest.  “Shepard, you can’t sideline me on this.  I’m coming with you.”

“I don’t want to,” she replies, softening her voice,  “But Ash,”  she gestures in the direction of her friend’s wedding dress.  “You’re not exactly field-ready and we have to move now.”

“I know,” the Spectre admits.  Her voice is hollow, the inability to go and help the man she loves clearly agonizing to her.  “Just… find him.”

           

Shepard really wishes she didn’t keep having to drive like this.  Ever since she realized she was making Liara motion-sick in the Mako all those years ago, she’s been trying to watch herself.  Still, sometimes you’re chasing a rogue Spectre through the streets of Illium or trying to save your best friend’s fiancé and nobody can really blame for breaking a few speeding laws, can they?

As the sky-car takes a corner at a particularly sharp angle, Vega calls out from the back seat, “Madre de dios!  I heard the stories, but I never got to see the madness first hand.”

Wrex, sitting next to Ashara, only grins that big toothy grin of his.  “It’s great.  Just like the old days.  All we need now is Liara turning green to round things out.”

Ouch!  She didn’t need that reminder.  At least Tali comes to her defense, more or less.  “Give her a break you ungrateful bosh’tets.  Shepard always got us back alive, didn’t she?”

Shepard laughs.  “Thanks, Tali.  At least somebody here appreciates my hard work.”  She’s grateful for the familiar camaraderie with her old teammates at moments such as this.  The last thing she needs is to be focusing on how worried Ashley must be and the likelihood that this will be over before they can even get there.

It’s not hard to find what they’re looking for.  Halfway back to the hotel is the smoldering wreckage of a sky-car sitting in the middle of the street surrounded by two police vehicles, their lights flashing.

Ashara pulls to a sharp stop just in front of them and leaps out of the car, only to be informed by a short, bearded cop,  “I’m sorry officer but this is a crime scene.  I’ll need you to move back.”

She turns to face him.  “Do you know who I am?”  She tries not to take advantage of her fame too often, but it does have it’s uses.

He looks her up and down and his eyes widen in shock.  “Co…Commander Shepard?  I heard you were here, but I didn’t realize…”

The additional sight of Urdnot Wrex getting out of the car along with Tali and Vega appears to finish shutting down his brain so Shepard just moves past the cop.  “This is a Spectre case now,” she declares to the rest of the police.  “I need everybody else to stand back and make sure the crime scene is secure.”

The awestruck cops rush to comply and Ashara’s practiced eye takes in the bodies surrounding the wreckage of the sky-car while James joins them.  A female turian, a dark blue-skinned asari, a human man too short and thickly-built to be Michael…  Thankfully, Ashley’s fiancé doesn’t appear to be among the dead, but everyone else on his team other than Varek is gone.  Not only that, but it wasn’t the bomb that appears to have killed them.  Each of the victims has been shot at close range, in some cases more than once.

Shepard shakes her head.  She’s killed more people than she can count, but that was in battle, in war.  To execute helpless, wounded men and women for no apparent purpose… It’s not right that soldiers, war heroes, died this way.  No one should.

 “This was personal,” Wrex growls with disapproval.

“I think you’re right,”  Tali agrees, scanning the wreckage of the car with her omni-tool.  “The bomb was weak enough to allow the people in the car to survive, but they would have been stunned.  Then the bombers could have just killed them and taken Michael.”

 “Unless he did it,” Wrex offers.

“Wrex!  How could you say that,” Tali demands.  Unlike many of the guests, she know Michael fairly well given her ongoing posting on the _Normandy_.

“Just saying,” the cynical old krogan snorts.

“Perimeter’s clear,” James chimes in as he rejoins the group.  “Whoever did this, they got the hell out of here afterwards.”

“Damn it.  Tali, send these scans back to Liara.”  She dials up her bondmate on her omni-tool.  “Liara, it’s me.  We’re at the wreckage of Michael’s car.  Everyone else is dead, but we think whoever did it took him with them.”

The holographic image of Liara keeps its calm demeanor but Ashara knows her wife too well to miss the worry in her eyes.  “My initial inquiries have not uncovered any involvement by a government or other large organization.  I suspect that whoever did this, it is a small group.  I’m sorry I do not have more but I’ll continue looking.”

She nods to her wife.  “I know you’re doing everything you can.  Tali’s sending over the data from the scene now.  Listen, Liara, this is bad.  Whoever did this, they could’ve left the rest of Michael’s team alive, but they made a point of killing them, and they took him when they’ve could’ve just executed him at the scene.  Whatever they want, we need to find them and soon.”

 

As soon as she sees Liara’s call with Shepard end, Ashley breaks away from her sister’s side and rushes over to the information broker, grabbing her by the shoulder.   “What did they find?  Is Michael…”

Liara's tone is compassionate at the same time that she’s honest.  Her friend knows all too well the pain that Ashley is going through; there were so many times that she had to wait, not knowing if Shepard would come back alive from a mission and only now does the Spectre fully appreciate the pain Liara went through.  “They believe he is still alive but he has been taken.  I am sorry, but the rest of his team is dead, murdered by the kidnappers.”

Ashley’s head spins at the news.  She tries to cling to the thread of hope that Michael is alive, but between the danger he’s in and the terrible losses, she’s not sure what to say. Nyria, Pallia, Gavin, all dead…  She’d only met them a few times, but they seemed like good soldiers and she knows what they meant to Michael.

She feels Garrus’ clawed hand clasp her on the shoulder.  “Do you have idea who might have wanted this kind of revenge?”

She narrows her brown eyes, pulling herself out of her own head.  Grief can come later.  “Not specifically, but he was Cerberus once, and he’s been with Alliance Special Operations since he defected.  That could mean a lot of enemies.  Liara can check up on that.”  The information broker stays on her omni-tool, but Ashley trusts her to do her job.  Now, she has to do hers.  “Come on, Garrus,” she says, turning to the turian.  “We need to get back to the hotel.”  That’s where her gear is, and she’ll need it if she’s going to make whoever did this pay.

 

“Well, look who’s awake.  I was worried I might have hit you a little too hard.”

Michael Bennet’s return to consciousness is accompanied by a throbbing pain in his head, and the mocking sound of his captor’s laughter.  The world begins to come back to him, but his eyes are still blurry, and all he can see in front of him is a large shape that’s probably a person.  He tries to force his body out of the uncomfortable metal chair he’s sitting in, but he fails, his movement halted by the ropes he quickly discovers wrapped around his wrists and chest.

“Good idea,” the man snorts, “But we can’t have you missing the party.  It may not be as fancy as your wedding to that Alliance bitch, but you are the guest of honor.”

Fuck.  He knows that voice.  “Eric?  Is that you?”

“Heh,” he laughs again, a sound utterly devoid of kindness, “Wasn’t sure you remembered who I was, traitor.  Not the way you’ve been acting.”

“It wasn’t like that.  I didn’t have…”  His words are lost in a wave of pain as a fist slams into his jaw.

He tastes blood and the laughter fades from Eric’s voice, replaced with raw anger.  “Save it, you piece of shit.  You’ll have plenty of time to explain yourself when we get there.  Not that it’ll do you any good.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

Eric doesn’t bother responding, but as the lurch of acceleration jerks his bound body, Michael realizes that he’ll be finding out soon enough.


	4. Cutting it Close

Sitting on a pew while all around her people try to make themselves busy, Liara is doing her best to keep working, but her daughter isn’t making it easy.

“Ball?”, Moira asks, holding up a blue rubber ball with the Alliance logo on it that Shepard gave her and is now one of her favorite toys.

“I’m sorry,” she smiles.  “Mommy has to do some very important work right now.”

“Aw, please?”  Before Liara can respond, the ball levitates out of Moira’s grasp.  The little asari looks around to see Nelia holding it, a small biotic flare around her hand.  Accustomed to such displays from her parents, Moira grins happily.  “Yeah!  Play ball!” 

As Nelia starts tossing the ball back and forth with her daughter, Liara smiles at the teal-skinned asari.  “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Nelia offers.  “I feel so useless right now, anyway.  That there is about the most impressive biotic feat I can mange.”

“Don’t worry.  This helps.”

Liara returns to her omni-tool, sending messages to contacts, sorting through databases, looking for some clue as to who might have taken Michael.  There are no suspicious patterns of purchases from the legal arms dealers on Sirona and nothing on the black market that she can find either.  If she assumes that the hitters aren’t local and brought the weapons with them, then they must have access to their own ship to get them in.  Between the explosives and the guns, smuggling them on a commercial flight would have been too risky.

She starts checking the backgrounds of private starships that recently docked on Sirona.  There are no immediate red flags, but that doesn’t surprise her.  Whoever is behind this attack is a professional, too careful to have their ship registered under the name of a known criminal, and so she digs deeper into the list.

Legitimate, legitimate, legit… wait.  The name on this registrations is a fake.  The Arthur Evans who’s supposed to own the _Windward Orientation_ was killed in the Reaper War.  The huge numbers who died or went missing in during the invasion have made it all too easy to perpetrate such frauds, but fortunately, Liara has access to the Alliance’s comprehensive casualty database.  As to who the real owner is, she can worry about it later; right now, Ashara needs this information.

 

Shepard taps her foot on the ground impatiently.  It’s infuriating to be stuck standing here, staring at the evidence of this vicious crime and yet not knowing where to hit back.  Patience under such conditions has never been her strong suit, a fact that a lot of broken glasses and aggravated personnel at the Alliance lock-up in Vancouver could testify to if the Reapers hadn’t destroyed it.

Wrex seems equally irritated.  “Cowards,” he growls.  “You can say what you want about the krogan, but when we start a fight, we don’t usually run and hide afterwards.”

Thankfully, right about then her omni-tool buzzes and the welcome sound of Liara’s voice comes in across the connection.  “Shepard.  I have a possible lead.  The frigate _Windward Orientation_ docked at the main spaceport in Sirona City is registered under a false name.  I am sending you the information now.”

“You’re the best, Liara.”  She gives the asari her best rushed smile, already leaping back into the sky-car as she talks.

“Hurry, love.  I will get Ashley to delay it’s departure but you are closer to the spaceport than she is.”

As the rest of the team gets into the car behind her, Shepard hits the accelerator.  Good driving practices will have to wait for another day.

 

When they arrive at the spaceport 16 frantic minutes later, the security barriers have already been lowered for them and spaceport control is waiting on the line.

“Commander Shepard.  This is Jeremy Luther in tower control.  We got a call from Spectre Williams telling us to expect you.  The _Windward Orientation_ was scheduled to depart 10 minutes ago but we’re holding it here as per her request.”

“Great,” she says briskly.  “Have your people stay back.  This is a very delicate situation and we need to…”

Three cracks of a pistol and a few brief screams are followed by the sharp sound of a woman’s voice.  “I’m sorry Shepard, but Jeremy and his friends had to go.  I’d advise you to stay out of this.  You’re not the one we have a problem with.”

“You’re killing innocent people and you have my friend’s fiancé,” she snaps, pushing the car hard towards the hanger while she talks.  “Kinda makes it hard for me to leave this alone.”

“I suspected you’d get your panties in a bunch but, hey, worth a shot I suppose.”

The call terminates and Shepard pulls tight around a corner, knocking over a couple of barrels of something liquid as she does.  Ignoring the sounds of derision coming from the back seat, she keeps up her desperate pace.  If these bastards have control of the tower, she’s almost out of time.

“There it is, Shepard,” Tali yells out.  The _Windward Orientation_ is a smallish frigate, older but well-maintained, the perfect ship if you’re trying to avoid attracting attention.  It’s also already starting to taxi down the runway. 

“Damn it!”, she spits out.  “Tali, do you think you could hack into the tower controls, try to stop them from…”

Suddenly, Shepard pulls hard on the car’s controls as a blast from the canon atop the spaceport’s communications tower slams into the ground just in from of them.  The car shakes and Shepard dodges hard right, ducking and weaving as she tries to avoid the lethal canon fire.

A sharp turn back to the left manages to prevent a direct hit, but even the glancing impact that catches the back of the car is enough.  The rental is no Mako, and as smoke begins pouring out of the engine, Ashara hits the breaks and the car skids to a stop.  She hits the release on the doors and dives clear of the car along with the rest of her team seconds before a third shot blasts the rental to pieces.

Ashara throws up a biotic barrier to shield herself and Tali from the flaming debris, but on the other side of the car, James isn’t so lucky.  The N-7 is gashed by several shards of metal that make a bloody mess of his chest and dress uniform.

“Tali,” she barks, “On me.  Wrex, get James to cover.”

“Shepard,” Vega protests, clutching at his torso.  “I can still…”

“Stow it, marine!”  She points to the _Windward Orientation_ disappearing into the sky.  “They’re gone and the only chance we have of salvaging something from the mess is capturing that woman who took over the comm tower.  I can’t have you slowing me down.”

The tower fires again but this time she and Wrex are ready, throwing up a combined barrier.  The shell is deflected off of the shield, and though her nervous system burns with the effort of maintaining it, they keep the blast from breaking through.

“Now!”, she snaps.  Wrex picks up the bulky marine like he was a sack of wheat, and the two pairs of warriors head in separate directions.  The krogan leader carries James behind a hanger while Shepard and Tali start circling around a set of storage containers, making their way towards the communications tower.

“As I was saying before, if you could hack that turret…”

The quarian begins typing into her omni-tool.  “I know, Shepard.  I’m trying to get into the system now.” 

A blast blows apart a nearby shipping container.  “Faster would be better.  I’d rather not have to dodge that thing all the way into the tower.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy it,” Tali laughs as her long fingers keep working.

“Maybe, but you’re one who gets to explain to Liara why I had to do it.”

“Wouldn’t want to anger the former Shadow Broker,” she says in mock fear.  “Got it.  You’re clear.”

Ashara breaks cover, dashing out towards the communications tower.  She’s about half-way there when the door is thrown open, revealing a short, lithe Asian woman in a non-descript dark jacket and slacks.  She points a heavy pistol in Shepard’s direction and fires but the Spectre ducks and rolls under the shot.  She comes up throwing a biotic blast, trying to incapacitate the woman without killing her.  Her shields are fairly solid though, and so while Ashara’s attack staggers her, it doesn’t put her down.

Shepard rushes forward, trying to reach her while the woman is recovering.  She turns and runs, but though Ashara is faster, before she can close the gap, the mysterious woman drops a grenade behind her.  Shepard dives to the side, letting her barriers absorb the part of the blast that she can’t dodge, and from the ground, she hurls a singularity in front of the woman.  The smaller woman struggles in the grasp of the biotic field, her escape temporarily halted.  She tries to thrash free but before she can, her body begins to jerk uncontrollably and Ashara looks behind her to see Tali standing there with her omni-tool raised.

“Neural shock,” she says proudly.  “You get her shields down, it does the rest.  Well, maybe not if it was Wrex, but it did the trick here.”

Ashara pulls herself to her feet.  “Let’s just hope she recovers in time to tell us where they took Michael.  And maybe what the hell this is all about.”

 

“So, we’ve got the woman who sabotaged the turrets tied up in a hanger.  I’ll send you her picture to analyze, but it’ll still be a little while before she comes to and the ship got away.”

“I see, Ashara.”  Liara takes a breath, looking at the distressed face of her bondmate across the omni-tool connection.  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”  She manages a slight smile.  “I am sure you drove there as fast as is humanly possible.  If I had gotten you the information sooner…”

“Don’t you do it either, Liara.  We wouldn’t have anything if you hadn’t worked as quickly as you did.”

“Thank you,” she smiles wearily at her wife.  “But I did not call because I needed reassurance.  I have continued digging into the _Windward Orientation_ ’s registration and I’ve  found something.”

You really do work fast,” Shepard says appreciatively.

 “When I have to, love.  The named owner was a dead war victim, but the money behind the purchase led back to an account at a bank on Illium.  I called in a small favor there, got the security footage from when the account was opened, and ran the face through a variety of databases.  It belongs to a man named Eric Chernenko.  He was an elite operative for Cerberus.  Shepard,” she adds quietly, “He was a part of the same cell as Michael.”


	5. Choices and Consequences

“Where is the bitch?!”

Shepard turns around as Ashley, freshly changed back into her uniform, storms into the hanger followed closely by Garrus.

“Ash,” Ashara says.  “I’m so sorry.  I was too late.”

“It’s not over yet,” the Spectre growls.  Shepard’s glad that she’s angry.  That’s a hell of a lot more useful than despair right now.  “These assholes wanted Michael alive for some reason.  We just need to find out what it is and make your prisoner tell us where they’ve taken him.”

“Actually, Liara found something on that front already.  The ship registration traces back to an Eric Chernenko, who was part of the same Cerberus cell as Michael.  Do you know anything about him?”

Ashley rubs her forehead, wracking her memories.  “Yeah, he mentioned Eric a few times.  A real asshole, a borderline psychopathic assassin if I remember right.  He could definitely be involved, but I don’t know if he has the brains to have planned this whole operation.”  Shepard can hear the fear in her voice as Ashley tries not to imagine what this man might be doing to Michael.

Ashara gestures in the direction of the unconscious Asian woman, now tied to a chair with some rope they found in the hanger.  “What about her?”

“I don’t know who she is, but there were a lot of people in Michael’s group and even he didn’t know who survived the Alliance attack on his base.”

“If these are the people he betrayed to the Alliance, that’s a pretty powerful motive for the survivors to seek revenge,” Garrus, who should know, adds.

“It wasn’t like that,” Ashley snaps, turning on the turian.  “This is Cerberus we’re talking about.  He had every right…”

“Everybody knows that,” Ashara says firmly.  Ashley needs to keep her anger focused, as hard as it may be right now.  “He’s just saying that the people behind this may not see it that way.  Tali, have you made any progress breaking into her omni-tool?”

“Not yet Shepard; the encryption on it is pretty advanced.  But I think the prisoner is waking up.”

Ashley stamps over to the bound woman, who’s shaking her head, trying to clear out the lingering effects of the neural shock.  “Where’s Michael?”, the Spectre snarls, grabbing the prisoner by the chin.

“Not here, I see,” the prisoner laughs wearily.

The Spectre slaps her hard across the face.  “I’d lose that attitude if I were you.  One word from me and you’ll be spending the rest of your life on a penal asteroid so remote that the krogan guards will start looking good.”

“Hey, I resent that,” Wrex protests, returning from taking Vega to get medical treatment, but Ashley doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Bring it on,” the prisoner sneers.  “I’ve gone through worse.  And so will your miserable traitor of a fiancé.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Ashley growls, her thumb pressing against the pulse point on the woman’s throat, eliciting a choking gasp from her.  “You’re going to talk or you’ll be leaving here feet first.”

“Ash!”, Shepard snaps, yanking the brunette off of the prisoner.  “Come with me!  Now!”  Ashley shoots her a dagger of a look, but steps back, walking out of earshot.  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What I have to,” she protests.  “This piece of crap knows where Michael is and I doubt she’s going to tell us any other way.”

“You didn’t even try.  You just jumped straight to torture.  This isn’t you.”

“And what if was Liara that they had?”, Ashley demands.  “Liara that they might be doing god knows what to right now.  Are you telling me you’d be worried about what happened to one of the bastards responsible?”

“No,” Shepard answers quietly.  She can still remember the sick feeling in her gut when the Baria Frontiers office exploded and she didn’t know if Liara was alive or dead, along with the rage she’d unleashed on the Shadow Broker mercenaries that tried to stop her from getting her answer.  But that’s not the point.

“I’d be just as pissed off and frightened as you are.  But it doesn’t mean I’d be acting rationally.  We have to be smart about this.  This woman was probably a Cerberus operative.  She’s used to pain.  How long would it take to beat this information out of you?  Days?  Weeks?  Would you die first?  Even if you could live with torturing her, it would take way too long.  We have to find another way.  Let me see what I can do.”

“Give her a chance,” Garrus adds.  “She did bring Miranda around after all.  Only a shame this one probably doesn’t have a cloned sister she can rescue.”

Ashley takes a deep breath, disciplining herself.  “All right.  We’ll try it your way.”

 

Shepard gets everyone else to clear out and give her some space to speak privately with the prisoner.  Liara just sent her a name and some background information based on the photo, which gives Ashara a place to start, but it’s not going to be easy.

“Yin Chen,” she says calmly.

“So,” the prisoner snorts derisively, “You’re the good cop.”

She doesn’t rise to the bait.  “I think you know who I am.”

“Of course.  The great Commander Shepard.  You used to be the Illusive Man’s little lap-dog, and now you’re galaxy’s sweetheart.”

She laughs in spite of her herself.  Not quite how she’d categorize things, but the bitterness in Yin’s voice is a clue she can use.  “I think a few things happened in-between, but you’re right.  I did work for Cerberus, just like you.  I know why you did it too.  I know your brother was taken by the Collectors at Ferris Fields, and that nobody but Cerberus was doing anything about it.”

“I don’t want your pity,” she spits.

“This isn’t pity, this is understanding.  The Collectors destroyed my ship, killed 20 of my crew, and all but killed me.  I woke up two years later and found out the Alliance and the Council swept all of it under the rug.  That’s why I worked for Cerberus, even though I knew they were up to some pretty shady stuff.  For a while there, they were also doing good work, protecting the galaxy.”

Yin nods, and Shepard sees the first crack in her armor.  “But things changed, didn’t they, Yin?  The Illusive Man had you hitting targets that didn’t make sense.  You were involved in the attack on the STG base on Sur’kesh.  What was the point of that mission?  To kill Urdnot Bakara in order to stop me from brokering an alliance between the turians and the krogan.  But why?  We were all fighting the Reapers.  Even if we disagreed about our approaches to the war, why should the Illusive Man have tried to stop me from doing that?”

“I suppose you have an answer.”

“Because he was indoctrinated.  You should have seen him at the end.  Half-covered in Reaper tech, a ranting shell of the man who devoted his life to helping humanity.  I know Michael sold you out, but that’s what he was dealing with.  An organization that had gone over to the Reapers.”

“This isn’t about them,” she yells, her veneer of disdain giving way to the hurt underneath, her voice echoing in the vast space of the hanger.  “We were a team.  We’d been through twenty kinds of shit together, and he led the Alliance to our base to slaughter us.  Even the people who survived became pariahs.  You got to be the savior of the galaxy, he got to marry a fucking Spectre, and we had to live in the Terminus, living on scraps and hiding our real names, all because we tried to help save humanity.”

“You’re right.  It’s not fair.”  She means it.  Though there were certainly psychopaths in Cerberus like Kai Leng or this Eric, there were also undoubtedly well-intentioned people who got tarred with the same brush.  “But Michael isn’t the one who made people turn against you.”

“He betrayed us!  Whatever Cerberus was, he shouldn’t have done that to his friends”  A tear rolls down her face.  “I would have gone with him, but he never gave me the chance.”

“Do you know how close a thing the Reaper War was?”, Ashara asks, her voice softer now.  “How many times we almost lost everything?”  If she’d been a little later to Ilos or Bahak, if Liara hadn’t found the Crucible plans, if Sam hadn’t tracked Kai Leng to Sanctuary…  It still makes Ashara shudder to think about it.  “It was a chance he thought he couldn’t take.  Maybe you would have gone with him, but what about the others?  What would Eric have chosen?  If someone had betrayed Michael, you know what Cerberus would have done.  He made a tough decision in a bad circumstance.  You have to let it go.”

She can see the conflict in Yin’s teary, brown eyes.  Liara had told her the same thing after the war, when she’d been too caught up in her own guilt sometimes to fully appreciate the miracle of their survival, and if it was good enough for Ashara, maybe it will work for this old Cerberus operative.

“I can’t go back,” Yin says wearily, her resolve plainly starting to crack.  “Not after what I’ve done.  There’s nothing left to do but to see this through to the end.”

“I know you feel that way.  That there’s too much blood on your hands.  But there’s always a choice.”  After seeing Jack, Miranda, and Thane all redeem themselves, she definitely believes that.  “If you help us now, I’ll see what I can do for you.  I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it has to be better than spending the rest of your life in a krogan prison.  Come on, Yin.  How many more people have to die here for a war that ended 10 years ago?”  There’s a pause, and for a moment, Shepard’s not sure what she’ll say but when Yin looks at her, even before she hears the words, Ashara knows from the look on her face that the answer is yes.

 

Michael wakes to the sound of footsteps in the cargo hold.  He learned long ago that in situations such as this you have to rest when you can, particularly given the likelihood that sleep deprivation will be part of his torture.  He looks up to see who’s come in, but the chair he’s bound to doesn’t have a view of the entrance.  He knows it’s not Eric, though.  The footsteps are too light for the big man.

“Good morning, sleepy.”  A woman’s voice, angry, bitter, and all too familiar.

“Madeline?”  He shakes his head, trying to adjust to a reality where she’s alive.

“In the flesh.”  She’s staying out of view but the footsteps are getting closer.  “Despite your best efforts.”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Liar!”, she hisses.  Her voice has changed somewhat in the ten years since he last saw her.  The hints of warmth that used to be there are gone, and there’s a rasp now, a souvenir of an injury he suspects.  “Don’t feed me that shit.  I left you, and a month later you left us.  Didn’t have even the balls to try to kill us yourself though, so you hoped your new friends at the Alliance would take care of me and Decker for you.”

“That wasn’t it at…”

He’s cut off by a viscous blow to the back of his head and when his vision clears, he can hear her voice coming from in front of him.  “Well, I guess one and a half out of two ain’t bad.”  Madeline was always beautiful, tall and slim, with dark red hair, deep blue eyes, and sharp, stunning features.  The hair and the eyes are still there, but one side of her face is now little but a series of angry scars, red and nasty as the sneer on her lips.  “Too bad for you they didn’t get the job right.”

He starts to open his mouth to say something but she silences him with an elbow to the face.  He tastes blood and she growls,  “I don’t have any interest in hearing you justify what you did.”

He blinks back the pain.  “That why didn’t you just kill me, Maddie?”

 “You think I’d make it that easy?  No, you’ve got work to do before I let you die.  But we can talk about that later.  In the meantime, I wouldn’t want you to be bored though.”  She presses a button on her omni-tool and the door opens, admitting Eric carrying a vid screen which he sets down on a crate in front of Michael.

Eric turns it on and Michael sees an omni-tool recording of a street, one back on Sirona by all appearances.  Suddenly, a skycar comes into view, his car he realizes, and he feels at stomach twist at what he knows he’ll see next.

The car makes it half-way down the street when there’s a flash of light followed by the roar of an explosion.  The car skids to a stop, damaged but still partially intact, and he sees himself and his teammates start to stagger wounded out of its remains.  A few seconds later, there’s the crack of a gun and Pallia’s blue body slumps down, blood pouring out of the asari’s shattered crest.  Nyria tries to draw a pistol from its holster but there’s another shot and the female turian falls, followed seconds later by Gavin.  Michael sees himself on the other side of the car, trying to pull himself to his feet, desperate to do something, anything to stop the slaughter before a boot crashes into his face and he falls as well.  The Eric in the recording laughs, “Package secure,” and the video ends.

He turns to Madeline.  “Why did you show me this?”, he asks weakly, though in his gut he knows.

“Sweet dreams, Michael,” is her only reply before she and Eric turn and leave.  On the screen, he’s looking at a street on Sirona and a sky-car comes into view…


	6. The Problem at Hand

Ashley runs her hand through her long brown hair, pulling at the strands in frustration.  “Are you sure she’s telling the truth?”

“As sure as I can be under the circumstances, Ash,” Shepard replies.  “And it makes sense given the way these guys have acted.”

“So it’s really his psycho ex-girlfriend behind all of this?”  It’s not the easiest thing for the Spectre to contemplate.  Sure, almost everybody has some choices they regret in their dating history, but the thought of Michael being with somebody who could do something like is… She doesn’t even know how it makes her feel.  There’s no time to process that though.  She has to keep moving forward.

“It’s not just her,” Shepard adds.  “The other survivors of the cell are involved too, but Yin does claim that this Madeline is the one to really watch out for.  She was the second in command, and not only is she a highly trained killer, but she’s become pretty unhinged.”

“And she’s keeping him alive for what?  To torture him?”  Saying the words, Ashley feels a deep conflict.  On the one hand, it’s horrible to think of the man she loves being put through that kind of agony.  The other side of the coin, though, is that it does mean the bitch will probably want to draw things out, which gives them a shot at finding Michael before they kill him.

“That’s part of it, but they also want him to give up the names of the people in charge of the Alliance raid on their cell so they can hunt them down too.  Those files are still classified and they don’t have access.”

“Shepard, he doesn’t have that information either.”  She can feel her fear rising, tight across her chest.  Once they realize that, Michael’s odds of surviving much longer start plummeting.  “He didn’t set up the raid.   He gave the Alliance what he had, but then he went to fight the Reapers.  It was never personal, him selling out Cerberus, no matter what these goddamn terrorists think.”

“Then we have to get him back fast,” Wrex opines, as he joins the two of them by a stack of shipping crates.           

Ashley nods grimly.  “He’ll hold out as long as he has to.”

“I hope so,” Wrex says with a grunt.

“”He’s tough,” Ashley insists, trying to reassure herself along with the krogan leader.  “Tali, did you find anything on her omni-tool?”  Yin didn’t know where they were taking Michael, but Shepard had gotten her to give up her password.

“Sort of.  I found a couple of incoming calls from the _Windward Orientation_.”

“Can you trace them?”

“Not really, not to a current location,” she apologizes.  “They stopped calling once they realized she was probably dead or captured.”

“Even still,” Shepard says.  “It’s better than nothing.  Send the data back to Samantha.  Maybe she can figure out their likely heading.  Meanwhile, we better get back to the _Normandy_.  We need to be able to leave as quickly as possible once we have a location.”

“What about your new best friend?”  Wrex gestures in the direction of Yin.

“We’re bringing her along,” Ashley answers.  “If she’s lying to us, she’s going to regret it sooner rather than later.”

 

“So, does this sort of thing happen to you and Shepard a lot?”

Sitting in the car on the way to the spaceport, Liara laughs a little at Nelia’s question.  “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’ve met your bondmate three times.  The first time, cultists tried to murder her, and now we have a violent kidnapping at a wedding.”

Liara gives the anxious asari an apologetic smile, trying to put her at ease.  “I thought that we had a very nice visit the second time.”

“We did,” Nelia concedes.  “But two out of three is still an alarming ratio.”

Sam, sitting in the front, looks up from the comm signals she’s working on triangulating with her omni-tool and turns around.  “It used to be much worse, Nel.  This is progress.”

“Indeed,” Liara agrees, “In the old days, we could hardly visit a strange world without being attacked by pirates, or sentient plants, or thresher maws.”

Nelia looks slightly overwhelmed.  Clearly, in her world, these are not the sorts of things that just happen to people.  “How did you deal with it?  Sam said you were just an archeologist before you met Shepard.”

“I was, but it is remarkable how fast one can become accustomed to adventure.”  Especially when you’re falling head over heels for the woman who brings you on those adventures, Liara adds to herself.

Sam interrupts their conversation with a whoop of triumph. “I’ve got it!”

“Horary!”, Moira chimes in from the seat in-between Liara and Nelia, uncertain as to what’s happening but wanting to share in the excitement.

Nelia reaches forward to rub Sam’s shoulder affectionately while from the driver’s seat, Joker asks, “What’ve you got, Traynor?”

“Their destination.  I think they’re going to the asteroid field near the outer edge of the system.”  She pauses, a new concern tempering her enthusiasm.  “Which would be bad.”

“Why’s that, honey?”, Nel asks.

“Because the whole area is badly mapped and filled with blind spots and sensor anomalies and that sort of thing.  It’s an ideal place for them to hide from us.”

Joker just laughs.  “And here I was worried they were going to retire the _Normandy_ without one more desperate chase.”

 

“Quite a crowd we’ve got here, Shepard,” Garrus quips as the sky-cars begin to disgorge their passengers into the hanger containing the _Normandy_.  “Almost feels like we should be assaulting the Collector Base.”

“No kidding.”  Between the old team, Ashley’s new crew members, and some of the Spectre’s more insistent relatives, they have warriors to spare.  Even the salarian, Varek, has insisted on coming, only letting the medics apply some medi-gel and a few bandages before heading out to join them.  Not that Ashara can blame him; if she’d just watched her friends be murdered like that, she’d have to be missing both her legs and probably an arm before she’d stay out of the action.

One of the cars lands near her and Liara and their daughter disembark, joined by Nelia, Samantha, and Joker.  She gives her bondmate a quick kiss before taking Moira by the hand and turning towards the ship.  “Are you certain we should bring her along?”, Liara asks.

“She’ll be perfectly safe here,” Shepard confirms.  “I saw their ship; it’s barely armed.  We’re not going to be in that kind of fight, and since we’re both going, I’m just as happy to bring Moira along where we can keep an eye on her.” 

“Very well.”  Liara smiles in agreement, also clearly pleased to be keeping their daughter with them as long as she’s not going to be in danger.

“Besides,” Shepard adds, looking down at Moira, “You really should get a chance to fly on the _Normandy_ before they turn it into a museum.”

“What’s _Normandy_?”, Moira asks eagerly.  She’d been excited about their trip to Sirona and is clearly enthused about the prospect of going into space again.

“This is it right here,” Liara replies as they board the ship, heading up the gangplank and into the cargo hold.  “Your father and I used to live here before you were born.  In fact,” she gestures at the space, filled with shuttles and crates, “It is right here that your parents were married.”

“Wow!”  Moira claps her hands in wide-eyed delight.  “Right here?”

“Yup, kid,” Shepard grins.  Her daughter’s innocent enthusiasm and the memory of that day are doing a fine job of distracting her from her present worries.  “Me and your mom and your uncle Garrus and your aunts Tali and Ashley, we all used to live on this ship and some day I’ll tell you about our adventures here.”  But not quite yet, she thinks.  While there were certainly lighter moments, most of her tales of the Reaper War aren’t exactly for little kids.  Some day though, her daughter will want to know where she came from, and she should hear it from her parents before she gets her history from the vids.

 

With the bulk of the passengers set up in the observation lounges, an impromptu council consisting of Shepard, Ashley, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, and Magnus has been convened in the war room.  The _Normandy_ is on course to intercept the _Windward Orientation_ , but whether or not they catch up with their prey before it makes it to the asteroid field, they’ll still have the same problem, one that Garrus gives voice to first.

“Spirits, but I hate hostage situations,” the turian sniper growls.  “You can play them easy or play them hard, but either way, there’s a real risk that it turns into a mess.”  Remembering their first fight together, rescuing Dr. Michel on the Citadel, Ashara knows which approach Garrus prefers, but a quick shot to the hostage-taker isn’t a viable option here.

“The problem, Captain,” Magnus says coolly to Ashley, “Is that it’s uncertain either approach will work with these hostiles.  Even if we disable their ship, that won’t stop them from killing Michael before we can board, and negotiation may be fruitless, at least if this Yin woman is to be believed.”

Unfortunately, Ashara agrees.  “From what she tells me, there were four of them: her, Madeline, Eric, and another guy named Benson.  They feel like Michael betrayed them, got their cell killed, and left them with nothing to live for now that they’re branded as former Cerberus agents.  They went into this job accepting that it was probably going to be their last one.”  That also eliminates Shepard’s preferred approach of threatening the hostage-takers into backing down: Tela Vasir and Henry Lawson both were strongly interested in walking away from their confrontations with her, even if neither did so in the end.

“Only four people,” Tali asks, “For a ship that size?”

“There are also three crew members who aren’t part of the core group,” Ashara adds, “People they picked up in the Terminus Systems. “

“Maybe we can use that,” Wrex suggests.  “Hired guns aren’t generally that eager to die for credits.”

“In theory,” Liara shakes her head.  “But I doubt they will be permitted on the comms to hear any offer we make or near the prisoner to act on one even if they did.  We have to assume that is the former Cerberus operatives that we’ll be dealing with.”

“The problem,” Shepard opines, “Is that to negotiate, we have to have something they want, but what they want is revenge.  They already have Michael, and we can’t give them the other Alliance officers involved in the raid so we don’t have much to bargain with.”

Ashley’s said nothing all this time, lost in thought, but suddenly, a realization seems to dawn on her.  “That’s not true,” she says, a calm determination filling her voice.  “We have me.”


	7. Baiting the Hook

Tali gasps at her captain’s suggestion.  “What do you mean we have you?”

“Listen,” Ashley explains, “According to Yin, Madeline watched her boyfriend die when the Alliance hit their base.  She’ll want to get even, and what better way to do that than by killing me?”

“Two problems with your idea, Williams,” Garrus points out saracstically, “First of all, we can’t actually let them murder you.  And second, they’re not going to trade you for Michael, so what exactly is our plan?  Just give you to them and hope for the best?”

“No, I think that Ashley is on to something,” Liara says coolly.  “If they were willing to let her onto their ship, it would create an opportunity we might be able to exploit.”

Shepard can’t believe that her wife is saying this.  “Liara, they’re only going to let her onboard so they can slaughter her,” she protests.  “We can’t give them any more hostages.”

“Damn it, I know it’s a risk,” Ashley snaps back.  “But do you really expect me to just sit here and wait for them to murder my fiancé?”

“You know I could not do it,” Liara says firmly to her bondmate, “If it were you in such danger.”

“I know,” Ashara admits.  Liara worked with terrorists and risked her own life to get her back after the Collectors destroyed the first _Normandy_.  Shepard shouldn’t sell Ashley’s feelings short just because she’s worried about her friend.  “All right,” she agrees, taking a breath, “But we’re going to have to be smart about this.  We can’t just send you over to their ship to get shot.  To start with, I’d really rather you didn’t go unarmed.”

“Wouldn’t be smart anyway,” Wrex concurs.  “If she shows up with nothing, it’ll make the enemy suspicious.  But if she’s armed, than they might think that’s the whole plan.”

“Of course, she will probably need help if this is not to be a suicide mission,” Liara points out.

“Hey, I can take care of myself,” Ashley protests.

“I am aware of that, Ashley.  But there is a reasonable likelihood they will have rigged the ship to self-destruct.  If it appears you are going to succeed in rescuing Michael, then they will destroy all of you instead.  We would need someone to go along with you to disable any such mechanism.

“I agree, Captain,” Magnus says.  “If Maria was still here, we could send her.  Her tactical cloak would give her a reasonable chance of getting in undetected.”

“Well, since she’s not, what about Varek?”, Garrus suggests.  “He was good enough to get away from them at the bombing site.”

“I don’t know he’s up for it,” Shepard worries.  “He did have the stuffing blown out of him a few hours ago.  But he may also be our only chance.  Nobody else could get proficient enough with his cloak in time to pull this off.”

“Then let’s talk to him,” Ashley says.  “I don’t know him that well, but Michael trusted him, and that’s good enough for me.”

“All right,” Tali agrees.  “Now we just have to make sure that these bosh’tets go along with this plan.”

 

Michael grimaces in pain as the knife slices along the soft skin of his cheek before coming to rest just below his right eye.

“Now,” Madeline growls, her voice low and dangerous, “What was the name of the commanding officer of the raid?”

“The Illusive Man,” he spits.  “Riding a fucking Reaper.”

The knife cuts again, just below his eye, another star of bright pain in a constellation of it.

“Where was that loyalty when you betrayed us to the Alliance?”  She slaps him and blood splatters on the floor as the mad sound of her laughter echoes through the cargo hold.  “Where was that loyalty when you let them do this to me?”

She brings her face close to his, the scars seeming to pulse red with a malevolence all their own.  “You know how long I can go without letting you die.”  She smiles cruelly, clearly relishing the prospect.  “You’ll break eventually.  Why not give me what I want now?”

Because I don’t have it, he thinks.  He actually does know who the commanding officer was but that’s it.  She wants names he can’t give, and his only chance of staying alive long enough for Ash to find him is to not let her know that.  He’s got to have faith in her.  His fiancé is as tough and determined a person as he’s ever met and she’s got quite an assemblage of talent with her.  If anyone can find him in time, it’s them.

“Fine,” she grins.  “You want to take the long way there, I’m not complaining.”  She twirls the knife between her fingers, tossing it up above her head.  For an instant, he’s transfixed by the gleam of the blade and then her hand shoots out, viper quick, plucking it out of the air and slamming it down into his leg.  In spite of himself, he screams, agony raw in his throat as Madeline twists the blade into the wound.

She pulls the knife out of his leg, and her eyes run up and down his body, clearly deciding where to cut next, but before she can make up her mind, she’s interrupted by the buzzing of her omni-tool.  “Eric,” she barks into it, “I thought I told you not to disturb me.”

“I know that, but I think you’ll want to make an exception.  We’re being hailed.  By the _Normandy_.”

 

“This is Ashley Williams.  Who am I talking to?”

Ashley’s not sure what to expect from the other end of the com, but she doesn’t like what she hears.  The voice that crackles into existence, Madeline she assumes, sounds unhinged, filled with a rage that makes it hard to hear anything else in her words.

“To the person who’s holding your little boy toy, so if you don’t want things to get a whole lot worse for him, you’ll back the fuck off.”

“Not going to happen.”  She has to keep firm here, and remember the line she and the rest of the team agreed on, starting with pretending that this psychopath might be willing to negotiate rationally.  “Unless you want the _Normandy_ to destroy your ship, you’re going to give me back Michael Bennet.”

“I’ve gone to way too much trouble to do that,” she laughs.  “The only way I’m giving him back right now is in pieces, and if you don’t turn your ship around, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  Where do you think I should start?  His hands?  His eyes?” 

She fights to keep the visuals out of her head, trying to stay focused.  “And if I do back off, you’ll what?  Give him flowers and candy?  I very much doubt it.”

“We’ve got business.  You leave us to complete it, he might live a little longer.  Otherwise, he dies badly.”

“Not much of an offer.  No,” she answers dismissively, “I think I’d rather finish this right now.”

“You’d kill him?”, she sneers in disbelief.  “The man you claim you love?  I’ll be sure to let him know how much you care.”

“You’ll kill him anyway.  The only thing I can do is give him a clean death.  Joker,” she asks crisply, “How long until we’re in firing range?”

“Three minutes, Captain.”

“Three minutes, Madeline.  That’s how long you’ve got to change your mind.  It’s not too late.  I know you’ve made a mess of your life, but you can still do something decent for a change.”  Not likely.  Ashley’s just baiting her, trying to get her angry enough to agree to what she’s going to propose.

“Me!?”, Madeline seethes, bile dripping from every word.  “Me do something decent?  It was your precious Michael who…”

“You know what?”, Ashley cuts her off.  “I’m not interested in listening to the paranoid ranting of a terrorist.  Allow me to reiterate: you give me Michael back, you get to go to jail in one piece.  Otherwise, I blow your ship into space dust.  There’s really nothing else I have to say to you.”

“You fucking bitch,” she roars,  “I’ll tear you apart.”

“With that piece of junk you’re flying?  Unlikely.  Whatever you do, I’ll still be the last one standing.  Unless..”

“Unless what?”

This had better work.  “Unless you let me come over there and we see what happens next.”

“You really think I’m dumb enough to bring let you bring Shepard and the rest of your little gang onto my ship?”

“Not Shepard,” she says coolly.  “Just me.”

“Unarmed,” Madeline insists.

“Now who’s being treated like an idiot?  I’m not coming there so you can just shoot me in the head.  You think you can’t take me in a fair fight, just say so.”

The former Cerberus agent snorts, signaling agreement.  “No one else in the shuttle or everyone dies.”

“Understood.  See you soon, Madeline.”

           

Standing in the cargo bay, Ashley checks over her gear one last time.  Armor, Harrier assault rifle, back-up Predator pistol, incendiary grenades… Sadly, the enemy ship is too confined a space for her Javelin to be of much use, but everything else in order.  Still, considering the stakes, it’s hard not to be a little compulsive about every last detail.

Standing beside her, Shepard seems to feel the same way.  “You’re clear on the plan, right, Ash?   Because if we don’t get the sequencing correct, this can turn into a disaster real fast.”

The Spectre manages a smile.  “Thanks, skipper, but this isn’t my first week out of basic.  I get what I have to do.”

Shepard clasps her on the shoulder.  “Sorry, I know you’ll get it right.  I’m just not used to being stuck back on the ship when we’re doing these things.”

“Now you know how the rest of us felt,” Tali laughs.  “It’s no fun being the ones left behind.”

“Or having to worry about the people who are on the mission,” Liara adds affectionately, but with a conviction born of what Ashley knows were plenty of anxious hours waiting for Shepard to return.

The quarian turns to Varek, touching a few buttons on her omni-tool.  “I’ve sent the virus to your omni-tool.  You have to upload this into the ship’s main processor on the bridge.  It should disable their communications jammers and give me sufficient control over their systems to prevent them from over-loading the reactor.”

“Fast work,” Garrus compliments her.  Ashley’s glad they’ve gotten back to something like the friendship they once had.  Seeing how miserable Tali had been after their relationship ended broke Ash’s heart.  Her friend deserves more happiness than the galaxy has given her thus far.

“Well, we have a few of that model of frigate in the Flotilla,” Tali explains to Garrus and Varek,  “So I’m pretty familiar with their systems.”

“Are you certain about this?”, Doctor Chakwas asks the salarian.  “There are serious medical risks to going back into action so soon after suffering these injuries.”

“Noted,” the salarian says, “Still, it needs to be done.”  When Ashley and Shepard brought the plan to him, he practically jumped at the chance to even the score with the people who murdered his friends.

“Very well then,” the doctor says in a resigned tone.  “In that event, I recommend trying to limit your combat exposure.  You may have full range of motion right now, but further injuries could easily lead to severe internal bleeding.”

“Excellent advice,” Vareck replies, flashing a wry smile.  “Just have to make sure they never see me coming.”

Doctor Chakwas shakes her head, but doesn’t protest further.  She’s well acquainted with patients who insist on ignoring her advice.

 

Sitting next to Varek in the shuttle, Ashley is glad that it’s someone else who cares so much about Michael that she’s doing this with.  She wishes that more of her friends and family could have gotten a better chance to know the man she loves before the wedding, but the schedule she’s had as Spectre and his work with the Alliance haven’t allowed it.

As she waits, she clasps her hands, trying to find some comfort in her faith.  She knows that there’s no guarantee that this mission will turn out okay.  She firmly believes that God saw the galaxy through the Reaper War, but countless good people died before the victory was won.  Still, just because the answer might be “no” doesn’t mean she can’t ask.  Please God, she prays silently, let Michael still be alive, let him hold out a little longer.  Just give me that much, we’ll do the rest.

Varek notices what she’s doing.  “Michael’s strong,” he tries to reassure her.  “Once, fighting Reapers, he got separated from us, and was trapped behind enemy lines three days.  When we found him, his only complaint was that he was low on ammo.”

She laughs, the story breaking a little of her tension.  “He told me about that once.  Wasn’t there some incident with a Brute and a sewage tunnel?”

“Indeed.  On the first day, he got it to chase him in there after rigging a nest of explosives in the middle.  Then he spent two days trying to fight off the hundred or so cannibals who followed the blast right to him.”

“If he survived that,” she says with renewed confidence, “It’ll take more than this bitch to kill him.”  She looks out the window.  The _Windward Orientation_ is getting closer.  Time to do this.  “All right Varek,” she says with a nod, putting on her helmet.  “We’ve only got one shot at this.  Let’s get it right.”


	8. Showdown

“Quality over quantity,” Garrus insists.  “While you were wading through Geth troopers, I was picking off the snipers and heavy weapons platforms.”

“Hah!”, Wrex laughs.  “Classic turian argument.  You leave the krogan to do the heavy lifting, and then claim the credit.”

Though her two old friends seem in good spirits as they bicker on the other side of the shuttle, next to her, Liara can see that her bondmate has more weighing on her mind.  Ashara puts a hand on her knee and gives the asari an apologetic smile.  “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, “About before.  I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“I know.”  Liara looks back at her affectionately.  “You were worried about Ashley.”  Even though Liara appreciates her wife’s protective instincts towards her crew, it does put the former Spectre on edge from time to time.

“I still am.”

Hearing the anxiety in her words, Liara places her hand over the one on her knee and gives it an affectionate squeeze.  “We have to trust that she can handle herself.”

“It’s hard, not being there.  Really makes me appreciate what I put you through during the war.  I mean, I’m this much of a mess over Ash, and if it was you…”

Liara leans over and gives her bondmate a kiss.  Ever since she had been unable to save her family or friends on Mindoir, that moment of helplessness has driven Ashara.  Overcoming it helped shape her into a hero, but it also made situations like this especially difficult for the woman she loves.

“It’s all right,” Liara reassures her.  “Even if it was hard for me, I always understood that you were doing what you had to.  As we are both doing now.”  They’re Ashley’s back-up, but until Tali signals them that she has control of the _Windward Orientation_ ’s systems, they can’t go over there without risking Madeline blowing them all to pieces.

“I know.”  Ashara exhales, wrestling her emotions under control.  “I am sorry we had to leave Moira with Sam and Nelia again.  They’re not really supposed to be our babysitters.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.  I think Samantha was looking forward to giving the tour of the ship and besides,” she adds, making sure that Wrex and Garrus can’t hear them, “She may be able to show our daughter more of the _Normandy_ than I could without blushing.”

“There is that,” Shepard grins, Liara’s plan to lighten her mood having clearly worked.  “Just how many rooms there did we fool around in?”

“Surely not that many,” the asari protests.  Shepard keeps giving her that mischievous smile and as the aforementioned blush creeps up the information broker’s cheeks, she adds, “We did usually make it to a bed.”  She pauses.  “Usually.”

 

When the door of her shuttle opens, Ashley Williams is confronted by nothing but darkness.  She switches on the flashlight attached to her rifle, but even it’s beam doesn’t reveal anyone there to meet her, just a second shuttle and some random equipment lying around the docking bay.  She drops down out of the ship and as she does, Madeline’s voice breaks in over the loudspeaker.

“Welcome aboard, Captain.”  She doesn’t sound any saner then before, but there’s a predatory edge to her voice now, like a dangerous cat circling her prey.

“Where’s Michael?”, she asks coolly.  Ashley has to keep her head, or she’ll never be able to make this work.

“Just follow directions and you’ll see him soon enough.”

Without any real alternatives, Ashley complies.  The ship is eerily silent, and with the lights out as well, only her own fears keep her company.  This is definitely a trap and the only question is when these psychos are going to spring it on her.  What’s more, her timing has to be incredibly precise.  If Madeline panics before Varek gives Tali control over the ship, they’ll all die.

“In here,” Madeline’s voice cackles when Ashley reaches the entrance to a cargo hold.  The doors slide open and she enters, sweeping the room with her rifle’s flashlight.  At first she sees nothing of interest, just boxes and crates, but then she catches a glimpse of a human form lurking behind one of them.

Before she can see who it is though, the overhead floodlights suddenly snap on.  The flash blinds Ashley for an instant and from some unseen hiding place, a figure hurls themselves into her, knocking the Spectre to the ground and sending her Harrier sliding across the floor.

She blinks, clearing her vision just in time to see Eric’s armored fist drive down into her helmeted face.  Ashley rolls with the punch backwards along the floor and when her attacker tries to follow up with a downward strike, she’s ready.  She deflects the man’s attack and slams an elbow into his bare head.  He staggers backward, blood dripping out of his broken nose and onto his short black beard, and she pulls herself to her feet.

As the two combatants circle each other, she gets her first good luck at the man most directly responsible for the kidnapping of her fiancé.  He’s tall, though not excessively so, with what under other circumstances could be a rough, handsome quality if not for his most distinguishing feature: his cold, dark eyes.  There’s something dead about them, and as he draws a knife, toying with it as he looks for an opening, they narrow menacingly.

“Always wanted to have a go at a Spectre.  Almost got a chance during the war with some asari bitch, but we missed her unit by a day.”  He slashes at Ashley, and she pulls back in time to avoid the strike.  She’s not sure if he’s talking about fucking a Spectre or fighting one, but with a guy like this, there may not be much of a difference.

“Try me,” she hisses, and he comes at her again, but this time she slams an armored blow into his forearm, causing the knife to fall from his grasp.  He follows up with a kick aimed at her midsection and she blocks it before sweeping his pivot foot out from under him.  He hits the ground but when she tries to press her advantage with a kick to his head, he catches her foot and pulls her down to the ground.  Ashley manages to aim her body as she falls, and she lands hard on top of him, ramming her armored mass into his solar plexus.

Eric gasps as the breath is forced out of his body and Ashley grabs him by the throat and shatters his jaw with a vicious punch to the face.  His head slams into the deck and she pulls back for a second strike, but before it lands, her chest explodes in a burst of pain as the rat-tat-tat of a submachine gun rattles through the hold.  She tries to duck out of the way, but the shooter’s aim is dead on, and Ashley’s shields break, her armor pressing against her chest as she falls to the ground clutching her stomach.

"Took your sweet time, Madeline,” Eric growls.  “You waiting for this bitch to kill me or what?”

“Well, you were talking such a big game, with all that crap about trying out a Spectre that I thought you deserved a chance to back it up. ”  Eric snorts and spits a bloody tooth onto the ground as Madeline looms above Ashley, keeping her gun trained on the Spectre’s head. “Still, it’d be a shame for you to miss the party.”  She turns on her omni-tool.  “Benson, bring out the guest of honor.”

From behind a wall of crates, a thickly-built black man in a suit of heavy armor emerges dragging a chair but it’s the man chained to it that has Ashley’s full attention.  Michael is a wreck, blood coating his leg, his face, and one of his arms, but thank God, he’s still alive.  Benson sets the chair down with a clear view of the scene, and though one of her fiancé’s eyes is swollen shut, he still looks up at the sight of her.

“Ash.”  His breathing is labored.  “You shouldn’t have come…”

Benson cuts him off with a cuff to the back of his head.  “Shut up, traitor.”

A mad snarl covers Madeline’s whole face as she turns to Michael.  “It’s good that she did.  After all, how else were you going to get to know what I felt?  I got to watch as the Alliance soldiers murdered Decker.  I lay there on the ground, half my face burnt off, and watched them shoot the man I loved down like a dog.”  She kicks Ashley in her sore ribs and the Spectre groans.  “And now, you get to watch me kill her the same way.”

“You think nobody else understands what you felt?”, Ashley gasps out skeptically, trying to buy time.  “I’ve been where you are.  I lost my squad on Eden Prime.  They were wiped out by the Geth and I wanted to avenge them too.  But it has to be about more than just that.  The war’s over.  This is just killing for the sake of killing.”

"No,” Madeline snaps, “It’s justice.”

“Justice?”, Michael chokes out incredulously.  “For what?  Ashley’s innocent.  Let her go and get your pound of flesh from me.”

Madeline just laughs.  “Innocent?  I don’t think so.  How many Cerberus operatives did you and that bitch Shepard kill?”, she ask rhetorically.  “Just the luck of the draw they weren’t the ones that took us out.” She kicks Ashley again and the Spectre curls up into a ball, trying to limit the damage she’s taking until she can make a move. 

“Speaking of your boss,” Madeline continues, “I bet she’d be pretty disappointed with your performance here.”  Her booted foot down crashes down onto Ashley’s helmet, slamming the Spectre’s head against the ground.  “You think the great Commander Shepard would’ve gone down so easily?”  The scarred woman turns to Michael.  “Maybe you should’ve tried banging Shepard instead.  Oh that’s right,” she adds, spitting on the Spectre’s fallen form, “She’s an alien-loving whore.  Still, I do wonder what she’d have done if she were here.”

Suddenly Ashley’s omni-tool buzzes and she looks up at Madeline.  “What would Shepard have done?”, the Spectre repeats, and the sudden confidence in her voice gives the former Cerberus member pause, “The same thing as me.  Stalled.”  A momentary confusion passes across the woman’s burnt face and Ashley reactivates her shields and lashes her foot out.  It catches Madeline in the shin and she stumbles backwards.  Ashley leaps up from her prone position and bowls the reeling woman over before turning her attention to the other former Cerberus operatives.

Eric reaches for a pistol, but Ashley reacts quickly, her Predator popping out of the hidden compartment in her armor where she stowed it.  He shoots first, but her shields deflect the bullet and she squeezes off two rounds of her own.  One of them hits him in the throat, drowning whatever last words he might have had in a gurgle of blood.

Even as Eric falls, Benson is drawing his shotgun, and the blast slams into her side, shattering her shields again.  Moving fast, she leaps at the bigger man, using her helmet as a ram.  She catches him in the stomach and he doubles over, staggering backwards.  Off to one side, Ashley can see Madeline frantically pressing buttons on her omni-tool as she curses at the device.  Hopefully, that means Tali has succeeded in getting control of the ship’s systems, but the Spectre can’t do anything about that right now, only focus on getting all of them through the next few minutes in one piece.

Benson swings the shotgun like a club and it catches Ashley in the shoulder, spinning her away from him.  He levels the gun to fire again, but she ducks, avoiding the blast and before he can reload, she reaches into her belt and tosses an incendiary grenade his way.  He’s too close for this to be a really good idea, but his armor’s too heavy for the pistol to be very effective, and she doesn’t have great alternatives.

Though Benson catches the worst of the explosion, Ashley gets caught in the edge of the blast.  The big man screams as the flesh melts off of his bones while she’s busy beating out the flames licking at her armor.  With the press of a button, she activates the medi-gel dispenser in her suit, and even as the grenade’s effects burn themselves out, the cool relief of the drug floods her system.

The relief doesn’t last.  The harsh sound of Madeline’s deranged laughter snaps Ashley back into focus and when the Spectre looks up, the mad-woman is standing behind Michael, her knife drawing a fresh bead of blood onto his already-red neck.  Ashley raises her pistol, but even crazed, Madeline instincts are too good to have left her a clean shot.  “You bitch,” the burnt woman snarls,  “You may have over-ridden my control of the reactor, but you’re still going to have to watch me kill…”

Madeline never finishes her sentence.  Instead, a final shower of gore splashes down on Michael, but this time, the blood isn’t his.  Madeline crumples to the floor with a massive hole in her head, and from behind her, the de-cloaking form of Varek shimmers into existence holding a pistol.

"Sorry I was late,” he quips as he moves to untie Michael.  “Had to make a stop on the bridge first.  Just glad I didn’t miss the whole show.”


	9. Moving On

As Varek works to undo Michael’s bindings, Ashley rushes to her fiancé’s side, applying a dose of medi-gel in an attempt to stabilize his wounds.  Now that she can see them up close, she’s appalled by what these animals did to him.  Not just cuts and bruises but stab wounds are scattered across his body, and she’s amazed that he’s even still conscious after all the abuse he took.

The salarian finishes freeing Michael and as the drug’s soothing properties start to take effect, her fiancé falls into the Spectre’s arms, staining her armor red even while the medi-gel works to stem further bleeding.

“Hey, babe,” she whispers comfortingly, “I’ve got you.  It’s gonna be okay.  Vareck,” she says, turning to the salarian, “Give Shepard with our location and tell her to bring the stretcher.”

While the infiltrator makes the call, Michael looks up at Ashley through his swollen eyelids.  “You shouldn’t have… Ash, you could’ve been…”

She just smiles back, letting his head rest against her armored chest.  Her body still hurts from the shots and blows she took earlier, but she puts the pain out of her mind.  They’re safe and that’s all that matters right now.  “Hey, I’m a marine remember?  Nobody gets left behind.  Nobody.”

He nods, and she can see the gratitude in his dark eyes even as they slide closed.  He’s taken too much punishment, and his injuries combined with the anesthetic properties of the medi-gel overwhelm his consciousness.  Michael slumps against her body and as he does, she looks to Vareck.  “How far are out are they?”

“Couple of minutes.”

“What about the rest of the crew?”  There are supposed to be three people aboard the _Windward Orientation_ who aren’t former members of the Cerberus cell.

“Killed the two on the bridge,” her informs her coldly.  “One more unaccounted for.  You want me to find him?” 

She shakes her head no.  Varek has done enough.  “The rest of the team will take care of it.”  She doesn’t bother asking him if it was necessary to kill the other two.  Right now, she doesn’t really care exactly what they knew.  What kind of job did they think they were signing up for anyway?

The salarian sits down next to her, his own fatigue starting to show through now that the fighting is done.  “Well done, captain,” he says.  “Michael is lucky to have you.”

“You too.  And I’m sorry about the rest of your squad.  Like I told Madeline, I’ve been there.”

Varek nods.  “At least got justice for them.  Most that could be done under the circumstances.”

“It’s all we can do,” she agrees wearily, shaking her head while she cradles Michael in her lap.  She hopes that this at least brings Varek a measure of peace.  Destroying the Geth on Eden Prime had made her feel a little better, but it didn’t change what had happened there either.  Vengeance may mean something, but having Michael alive means a hell of a lot more.

 

They’ve gotten Michael safely sedated and settled in the back of the shuttle as it returns to the _Normandy_.  As ugly as his injuries look, fortunately none of them are life-threatening with proper treatment.  Thank God Madeline’s sadistic desire to prolong his torture led her to avoid major arteries and vital organs when she was cutting into him.  Wrex, however, seems unhappy despite the success of their mission.

“Well, that was a disappointment,” he gripes.  “For once, I get the chance to get off my throne and see some action, and all I get to do is pull one quivering pyjack out from under his bed.”  He snorts in the direction of the terrified surviving crew member of the _Windward Orientation_.  “The least you could have done is taken a shot at me, for old time’s sake.”

The handcuffed prisoner doesn’t seem too keen on that idea.  “No, sir, Wrex sir, I would never have… I mean, I would never have taken this job if I knew who it was that we were grabbing.”

“Just figured it was a regular kidnapping, did you?”, Garrus quips, his mandibles twitching with amusement.  “I guess we should let you go then.”

Liara puts on her best ruthless Shadow Broker voice.  “An excellent idea.  The _Normandy_ has an number of airlocks that should suffice for this purpose.  Would you care to do the honors, Captain Williams?”

“I’ll take a pass,” Ashley groans.  “Once we get Michael settled, I’m sleeping for about a week.”

Shepard smiles proudly at her.  “Well, you certainly earned it.  You did good, Ash.  Hell of a way to close out your time as a Spectre.”

“Hell of a wedding too,” Garrus adds.

Wrex laughs.  “Almost enough to qualify as a decent krogan ceremony.  Through in a thresher maw or two and you’re there.”

Ashley appreciates the need for banter after a mission, but right now she’s too tired, both physically and emotionally, to join in any further.  As happy as she is that her fiancé survived, that relief is starting to give way to the weight of what happened.

“You okay?”, Shepard asks, examining the Spectre’s armor.  “They worked you over pretty good.”

“I’ve had worse,” she shrugs.  “Just worried about Michael.”

“Hey,” Shepard assures her, putting her hand on her shoulder, “He’s going to be okay.”

“Physically, yeah, but what they did to him, the torture, killing his squad in front of him…  Hadn’t he dealt with enough crap already without this piled on?”

Shepard sighs.  “I know.  But you’ll be there to help him through this.  Love doesn’t fix everything overnight, but it can make a hell of a difference.”  Her old commander looks over at Liara, still joking with Garrus, Wrex, and Vareck.  “Believe me, I know.”

           

Once they get back to the _Normandy_ , Ashley heads with Michael to the med-bay but Garrus goes to find Tali.  He wants to talk to her before the crew goes their separate ways on Sirona and he finds the quarian in her old hang-out in the engine room, looking up at the drive core.  “You always did love it down here.”

“I did,” she agrees, her voice pensive.  “Strange to think this was probably the _Normandy_ ‘s last mission.  I’m just glad it could be a success.”

“That’s why I’m here actually,” he tells her.  “Have you given any thought as to what you’re going to do once they turn this place into a museum?  If you’re interested, you know I could always use your help on Omega.”

Tali laughs good-naturedly.  “I still can’t believe you’re really doing that.  Keelah, trying to clean that place up again…  Is it even possible?  I’ve never been anywhere so messed up that wasn’t filled with Reapers.”

“I don’t know,” he admits.  “But it lets me do good without the red tape and besides, who else is dumb enough to try?”

“Good for you, then.”  She pats him on the shoulder and for the hundredth time, he wishes he’d been in love with her.  She was such a good friend and it would have been so much easier if he’d felt what she wanted him to.  “I can’t come though.”  She pauses.  “Being on the _Normandy_ and serving with all of you was the most incredible thing that ever happened to me.”

“To most of us,” Garrus agrees.

“But most of you moved on to something else.  I haven’t.  I think it’s why I took our break-up so hard.  Shepard had Liara and if I had you, then I could pretend that things hadn’t changed.  Then when that didn’t work out, I came back here, which was just another way to hold on to the past.”

“Maybe you weren’t the only one who had trouble moving on,” Garrus admits.  “I wanted to want you, even if I didn’t.  You meant so much to me.”

She nods, and the turian can tell that she’s not holding on to that old anger anymore.  Tali turns back to the drive core and she says, “It’s time now though.  I’m going back to Rannoch.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to live there, that you couldn’t celebrate the destruction of the Geth the way most of your people did.”

“I’m not going to celebrate it.  But things have been changing.  Now that some time has passed, we’re more willing to ask questions about why the Geth rebelled and about what we did in the Reaper War.  I should be a part of that.  Someone should speak for Legion.”

Garrus nods approvingly.  “You have something specific in mind to pay the bills while you’re there?”

“I do.  I’ve been offered a job as the lead engineer for the new university being built in the capitol.”

“Shepard City University,” he chuckles.  “Just how many things does that woman have named after her?”  No matter, she deserves it, whatever her protests to the contrary.  “Sounds safer than my gig.”

“Well,” Tali laughs, “You always were the thick-headed one.”

           

“Look!  Look!”  No sooner do Shepard and Liara walk onto the bridge of the _Normandy_ when Moira runs over to them, gesturing excitedly at the holographic galaxy map in the center of the room.

Samantha follows close behind her wearing a bemused look.  “Sorry, Shepard, I haven’t been able to pull her away from this thing.”

“No worries,” Ashara says, reaching down to pick her daughter up for a hug.  “I thought it was pretty cool the first time I saw it too.”

“Look, Daddy!  Home!”  Moira points at the star cluster containing Thessia.

“Yes, my dear,” Liara beams.  “That’s where we live.”

“I told her this is where her daddy commanded the _Normandy_ from,” Sam says with a smile.

“Well, we appreciated the help,” Shepard tells the former specialist.  “We should be done abusing your kindness for today.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Nelia joins them by the map.  “I have a little sister I helped raise and I kind of miss it.  Now, I just have her to take care of.”  She turns and gives Samantha a quick kiss on her cheek.

“Hey,” Sam protests, “Just because I’m not 153 years old doesn’t make me a child.”

“Never said you were,” the teal-skinned asari says mischievously.  “Just that you need a little care sometimes.”

Sam blushes and Shepard laughs while her daughter continues pointing at star clusters and soon she joins in, telling Moira the names of the various systems she’s looking at.  Ashara loves seeing her enthusiasm.  Once, she’d been a little girl dreaming of going to the stars too.  Now, she’s been to most of those clusters, fought battles there, met people, saved people, killed people…  Moira hasn’t done any of that.  She gets to discover all of those worlds for herself, but without the Reapers looming behind every star.

“Come on,” she tells her daughter, putting the little asari back down.  “I’m going to show you where your mom used to work.”

“Okay,” Moira says happily, her curiosity fortunately getting the better of her desire to keeping playing with the star map.

They take the lift down to the crew deck, but before they get to the office that once belonged to her wife, Ashara is stopped by the sight of the memorial wall.  It has new names since she last visited it, Shirat among them, and she pauses as old memories bubble up towards the surface. 

Liara notices her bondmate’s distraction, and she plants a soft kiss on her lips.  “Take a moment, love.  I can show Moira the office.”

Ashara smiles over at her family.  “I’ll catch up with you two in a minute.”

As they walk away, the Shepard traces her fingers over the plates up on the wall.  Liara had told her how close the commander came to having her own name there right above Anderson’s.  It had been only minutes before the ceremony that the heartbroken asari had gotten the call from Miranda telling her that Ashara was alive.

So many others weren’t equally fortunate.  Some had died well, to the extent that one could, giving sacrificing their lives doing something that mattered.  Mordin, curing the genophage or Thane, protecting Councilor Valern and securing salarian support for the Crucible project had died as heroes, no matter how they had lived. 

Too many of the other names were up there because of the decisions she’d made.  Kaiden, left behind on Virmire.  Legion, stabbed by Tali and shot by Shepard because the commander couldn’t let the Geth exterminate the quarians, and couldn’t trust them after they’d worked with the Reapers, no matter their reasons.  And EDI, poor EDI, because Ashara made what she thought was the best of a pile of bad choices on the Citadel.

Right after the war, it had been hard for her to even look at those names, the grief too fresh and her doubts over her own actions too sharp.  Now, though the pain would never fade entirely, it was easier for her to think about those that she had lost. 

Sacrifices had been made, but the future they had bought was one that seemed to her as if it had been worth the price.  There was still pain and conflict in the galaxy, but there was also joy and people getting to live the lives they wanted.  Let them make this ship into a museum, she smiled.  Those who had survived should remember those who had died to make it possible.  As for herself, she thought, turning towards Liara’s old office, she may have endured more than her share of pain, but she had found more than her share of joy.

 

Light floods Michael’s vision as he awakens and blinks, trying to clear his eyes.  He’s still drowsy, but he can tell his wounds have been treated and even as consciousness returns, he becomes aware of a warm hand resting on his forehead.  Looking up, he sees the beautiful brown eyes of Ashley Williams looking warmly down at him.  “Hey, gear head,” she says cheerfully.  “Glad to see you’re finally awake.”

“Thank you,” he replies quietly.  He hadn’t expected to leave that cargo hold alive and he can’t think of more to say as he tries to process everything that’s happened since his car exploded.

“Hey, why date a Spectre if they can’t bail you out in a pinch?”  She strokes his black hair.  “Besides, you’re not getting out of the wedding that easily.  I’ll always find you.”

He sighs, the weight of events starting to hit him.  “You don’t have to do this,” he protests.  “Try to make me feel better.  I dragged you into all of this.”  He’d thought that part of his past was long behind him; to have exposed the woman he loves to it, to have gotten his friends killed; his physical wounds may have been salved but they’re hardly the worst pain he’s felt today.

“Hey.”  She bends down and gives him a gentle kiss before sitting next to him on the med-bay bed.  Christ, she looks lovely, he thinks.  Better than he deserves.  “Don’t talk that way.  Married or not, we’re a team now, you and me.  I’m not going anywhere.”

He gives her a smile, the best he can manage under the circumstances.  He can’t think of more to say but, then words were never his strong suit.  She knows he loves her, and if she’s sticking with him after this nightmare, then really, what more needs to be said?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that ends the first of the two major arcs of What Endured. Coming up soon, more Jack and Miranda, more fluff with Shepard and Liara, and some ominous developments.


	10. War Hero

“God, Jack,” Miranda groans as her girlfriend hops eagerly onto her couch, “You’re not really going to make me do this, are you?”

Jack can’t control her amusement at such a ridiculous question.  “Are you kidding, princess?”, she cackles,  “We’re watching every minute of this show.”

Miranda sighs and heads towards the kitchen of her apartment. “Very well.  But I’m going to need a drink.”

“I bet you do,” Jack grins,  “Get me one too.”

While she waits, Jack lies back, putting her feet up on Miranda’s glass coffee table.  It’s scrupulously bare of any junk, just like everything else in the apartment, drink coasters in place, the remote right out in the open instead of buried in the couch cushions.  Personally, she never saw the point, but hey, if the cheerleader wants to waste her time cleaning, who’s Jack to complain?

The biotic flips on the vid screen and Miranda returns just as the rousing strains of martial music begin to play over the Alliance logo.  “Wine, babe?  You sure you’re not going to need something stronger?”, she teases.

“I brought the bottle.”

Jack chuckles but before she can say more, a pretty if slightly vapid face brunette’s face appears on-screen.

“Hello and welcome to another edition of “Heroes of the Reaper War,” she says in a perky voice that reminds Jack of what she always imagined actual cheerleaders must sound like.  “I’m your host, Diana Allers, and tonight, we’ll be taking a look at one of our unlikelier heroes, a woman who wasn’t a member of the Alliance or part of a friendly alien government, but instead was a high-ranking Cerberus operative.  In spite of that, though, I think that after you watch this episode, you’ll agree with me that the galaxy wouldn’t have been saved without the efforts of Miranda Lawson.”

Jack plants a nipping kiss on her lover’s neck.  “You hear that, babe?”, she snickers.  “You saved the whole galaxy.  I bet after this you’ll be almost as famous as Shepard.  Admiring crowds mobbing you wherever you go, paparazzi taking pictures… ”

Miranda sighs with the weight of a thousand imaginary photographers.  “Hopefully, it won’t be that bad.”

A smirk covers the convict’s face as her train of thought chugs onward.  “Hey, I’m your girlfriend.  I could be famous too.  Be on the cover of tabloids and shit.  Bet the reporters would love me.”  Honestly, she wouldn’t really want that kind of attention, but she bets she can make Miranda squirm thinking about it.

It works too, a distressed look crossing the cheerleader’s pretty face.  “Jack, if our relationship were to become public, I really hope that you would make an effort to not embarrass me or this school.  I may be accustomed to your… particular style, but not everyone may be as understanding of your eccentricities.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack snaps, suddenly regretting her tease as an unpleasant thought occurs to her.  “I mean how many people even know we’re together, right?  Just a week-end of fucking every few months; not much to write home about.”

“Hey.”  Miranda doesn’t volley the insult they way she usually would, instead pulling Jack closer for a kiss that in spite of her irritation, the biotic is too surprised to protest against.  “It’s not like that,” the former operative insists.  “Jack, there’s a reason I asked you to come visit me this week, and it’s not so we could watch this idiotic show together.”

On the screen, one of Henry Lawson’s few acquaintances who isn’t either dead or in prison is going on about Miranda’s childhood, but Jack ignores the opportunity to pick up more ammunition for later.  “Then what the fuck Miranda?  What’s the big secret?”

“I had hoped to bring this up at a more opportune time, but if you insist…” Her lover takes a deep breath.  “A position as a senior research director at Grissom Academy has opened up and I’ve been considering whether or not I should apply for it.”

“And what?”, Jack asks sharply, her hackles raised.  “You wanted to make sure you could stand being with me for more than a day or two?  That I’d behave like a good girl in front of your snotty friends?”

“No.”  Miranda’s voice is tender as she takes Jack’s hand in her own.  “I already know I want to be able to see you every day.  I just wanted to make sure you were okay with me moving in next door.  It would be a big step.”

“Well, fuck me,” Jack snorts to herself, feeling like quite the idiot.  Trust is still hard for her to give.  As much as their relationship has developed over the last few years, a part of her still doesn’t totally believe that things could really work out for two people as different as them, that something even vaguely approaching a normal life could be within her reach.

“I can pull some strings and probably get the job if you want me to,” Miranda continues, good enough not to chide Jack for her paranoia while the possibilities of what she’s suggesting hit the biotic.  For years now, they’ve been doing this long-distance shit, finding time when they could: a call every few days, a week-end together every few months.  At first that was what both of them wanted.  Everything that was happening was so new and strange, and they’d barely been able to admit that they didn’t hate each other, much less that they were getting into a real relationship. 

Now, though, fuck it, Jack wants more.  She wants Miranda, and the hell with whether or not it makes any sense.  She grabs her girlfriend, kissing her hard.  “Hell, yes, you should do it,” she insists, her hand going to caress a full breast. “You think I’m gonna pass up the chance to get some of this any time I want?”

Miranda moans into Jack’s ear as the convict fondles her, her thumb brushing over a hardening nipple.  “Sometimes,” Miranda smiles, “You still surprise me.”  She pulls Jack into her lap, running an hand over her lover’s tight ass.  “Now, what do you say we head off to the bedroom and celebrate?”

“Oh no,” Jack pulls herself off of Miranda, eliciting a surprised look from her girlfriend.

“Since when do you turn down sex?”, Miranda asks incredulously.

Usually, the cheerleader would be right, but not right now.  “You’re not getting off the hook so easily,” Jack laughs.  “I’ll be happy to fuck your brains out once we’ve finished this show.”

“If you make me finish this absurd program, you’re going to be the one getting fucked tonight,” Miranda insists.

Normally, Jack enjoys fighting with Miranda over who gets to be on top, but now she just laughs and says, "Deal."  With the amount of shit she plans on giving her lover, Miranda deserves a break.

 

“I really can’t say enough about everything Miranda did.”

Shepard is sitting in what Miranda recognizes as her living room on Thessia, talking to Diana Allers.  For the most part, the operative was being sincere about her hated of this kind of puff piece.  People who don’t know her presenting a sanitized picture of her life doesn’t appeal to her; indeed she’d only agreed to cooperate with the documentary at all on the promise they’d demonstrate at least a modicum of honesty in their portrayal.  Still, Shepard isn’t just anyone and her words mean a great deal to Miranda.

 “I realize most people only know her as the person who brought me back from the dead a time and a half or so, but that’s just a part of what she did.  She was a hell of an XO when we defeated the Collectors too,” Shepard continues.  “That mission wasn’t as high profile as some of the others the _Normandy_ went on, but it was extremely important and she did an outstanding job with it.  What ever fewer people know though is that she was the one that got the Alliance the location of Cerberus headquarters.  She used to tell me she always had a plan and without that one, we would have been in a really tough spot.”

Diana Allers smiles at Shepard.  “And it doesn’t bother you that she was a high-ranking member of Cerberus for years.”

“At first, sure it bothered me.  When I met Miranda, I think we were both a little suspicious of each other to be honest, but when I got to know her, I realized that she only wanted to help protect the galaxy.  And remember,” she adds, “I worked with Cerberus for a while too.  People need to remember what a confusing time that was.  Even those with good intentions often made mistakes trying to figure out how to approach everything that was going on.”  She laughs.  “I think we all remember the Council’s shall we say, shifting stance on the Reaper threat.  As far as I’m concerned, Miranda deserves all the credit you can give her.”

Miranda blushes slightly and Jack kisses her on the cheek.  “There you go, babe.  Even Shepard says you’re a hero.”

“You know I didn’t ask her to do that, right?”

“Yeah, but you know the queen of the girl scouts.  Always trying to spread around  the credit.  Probably would be happy if the press spent less time camped outside her house, anyway.  I swear, if I had a fucking credit for every email promising pictures of her screwing Liara, I could buy my own star cruiser.”

Back in the studio, Allers continues, “Indeed, not only did Miranda Lawson plant the tracking device on notorious Cerberus assassin Kai Leng that led the Alliance to Cronos Station, she also killed the man responsible for the atrocities on Horizon, her own father, Henry Lawson.  The Alliance News Network has recently obtained security camera footage from the so-called Sanctuary facility of that incident.  I warn our viewers that some people may find the following video unsettling...”

Not her though, Miranda thinks as she pulls Jack closer, caressing her flat stomach.  Henry Lawson may have been her biological father, but he had only ever been a source of pain to her and her sister.  Of all the regrets she has and all the things that haunt her dreams, killing that monster isn’t one of them.

 

Edric Turner watches silently as the recorded events unfold on his screen.  Henry Lawson has already released Oriana, but Miranda doesn’t care.  The battered operative rises, screaming out “No deal!” as she unleashes a powerful biotic blast at her father.  The executive is lifted clear off of his feet, crashing through the plate glass window behind him, screaming as he falls to a death that Edric can only hope was mercifully quick.

With a touch of his remote, he turns off the screen and opens up an extranet connection.  For ten years, ever since Henry Lawson died, Edric had believed that his mentor had been a victim of the Reaper attack on Sanctuary, but now, he knows otherwise.  He had always hated Miranda; the ungrateful trollop had run out on everything Henry tried to offer her, ruining the vast investment that her father had made in her future.  Not only that, but she had stolen Oriana and then turned her against Henry as well.  Those incidents, though, he had been prepared to forget.  Henry was dead; better to let the feud die with him.

Not now.  The killing of such a man even after he had complied with her demands cannot go unpunished.  He knows Henry would agree with him.  His mentor had left behind provisions for revenge in the event of his murder, and while they have lain dormant for a decade, they can still be activated.

Henry Lawson had been a great man, a man of vision.  He taught Edric so much about business, about life, and about the nature of power.  If he hadn’t been murdered, humanity might well reign supreme in the galaxy with the Reapers enforcing their will, not forced to share space on the Council with a host of filthy alients.  No, Edric Turner may have an obligation to fulfill, but he’s not ashamed him to admit that he’s going to take a certain pleasure in doing it.


	11. The Start of Something New

“And this has been another installment of ‘Heroes of the Reaper War.’ Join us again in two weeks when we’ll be examining the contributions of Colonel Kirrahe of the Salarian Special Tasks Group. Until then, I’m Diana Allers saying good night.”

Shepard picks up the remote to turn of the vid screen while next to her, Tali coughs loudly. Looking across the sofa at her friend, Ashara still finds it a little hard to get used to what she sees. Beneath her mask, Tali’s skin is grey with a purple tint. Her face is thin and her orange eyes are narrow and highly reflective. She’s pretty in an exotic way, but right now she’s also dealing with a nasty cold, leaving her eyes watering and her flat nose purple and puffy.

From Ashara’s other side, Liara reaches out a comforting hand and pats the quarian on the back. “Are you all right, Tali?”

"I’ll be okay. For now, I can only take the mask off for short periods of time indoors, and there are side effects, but it’s important that I keep acclimating my body to going without it or else the treatments won’t be effective.” She sniffles, and then adds, “Don’t worry. Most quarian diseases can’t affect species with stronger immune systems.” She pauses, becoming thoughtful. “It’s incredible to think that one day, quarian children will grow up without having to worry about any of this. That they’ll be used to air, and dirt, and water, instead of being sealed in a suit, refugees living on starships. And it’s all thanks to you,” she tells Shepard.

"Thanks to all of us,” Ashara replies before trying to change the subject. “So how has it been being back on Rannoch these last few month? I’ve really been meaning to visit when I get the chance.”

"Strange. It is a whole planet under construction, even 10 years after the war. We have to either build everything from scratch or repurpose it from the Geth. And our cities aren’t the only thing growing. Our population has exploded. When we were in exile, we had to control our birthrate because of the limited resources on the Flotilla, and now we have a world to fill up. Everyone is, as your people say, Shepard, screwing like rabbits.”

Ashara and Liara both laugh at the quarian’s use of the human expression, no doubt picked up from Joker or one of the other human members of the _Normandy_ ’s crew. “We have had something similar happening here on Thessia. Because of our long life-spans, asari have children rarely in order to keep our population under control but we have been making an exception of late. Even some of the Matriarchs have had another daughter. And speaking of asari children,” the information broker adds with a rueful smile, “I recommend that you keep that mask firmly on when you are spending time with Moira during your visit, as she seldom misses an opportunity to play in the dirt and is thus a vector for all manner of germs.”

“Hey, didn’t you used to dig up your mom’s garden when you were little?”, Shepard teases her bondmate.

“That was different. It was archeology.” Liara tries to keep up an air of solemnity, but when her wife and Tali both shoot her doubtful glances, she folds. “Oh, very well, I was little better when I was a child. But my advice still stands.”

"I will keep that in mind tomorrow. I’m sorry I got in past her bedtime.” Tali’s visiting as part of a joint training exercise between Ashara’s soldiers and the Quarian Fleet Marines. The former Spectre has been organizing these exercises with a lot of the other races; it’s a way for her students to get some variety in the types of opponents they face and it helps to build ties between the militaries of the various species that could be useful in future conflicts.

“Do not worry about it,” Liara tells the quarian. “I’m just glad you made it in time for the show tonight.”

“I bet Miranda wishes we missed it,” Tali laughs, launching into an impression of Diana Allers. “Miranda Lawson came from a privileged background, but she did not have a happy childhood. Next up, we’ll talk to some of the staff who worked with her father, Henry Lawson, and hear embarrassing stories about her as a little girl.”

“You shouldn’t make fun of Miranda,” Shepard chides her old friend. “I hear your episode may be in the works soon.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Tali replies. “I’m famous enough with my own people already and as an admiral’s daughter, I’ve had that kind of scrutiny my whole life.”

“Like you,” Ashara tells her wife, running her hand over the back of the asari’s neck. “And like our daughter now.” She’s just glad that the old family estate of Liara’s that they live on has enough privacy to keep away the gawkers and crazed fans, to say nothing of the tabloid press. Its only thanks to a minor miracle (mostly in the form of Liara’s counter-surveillance expertise) that spy tapes of them having sex haven’t made their way to the extranet yet. “It must have been hard for you, Tali,” she adds sympathetically, “It’s not easy to get away from the crowds on a ship.”

“No, it is not. My pilgrimage was the first time I ever felt anonymous. It’s actually much better now. The faculty housing at the university is quite spacious. “ She laughs in-between sniffles. “I hear there was a grant from the Shepard Foundation that helped to build it.”

“Well, we fund a lot of reconstruction work on Rannoch. Getting to do something nice for my friends is a bonus.”

“I’m sure the foundation has plenty of money,” Tali says with a laugh. “I still see those Shepard toys everywhere and even Garrus was fond of that dreadful Mako Assault game.”

Ashara blushes as Liara says, “Speaking of Garrus, the last time we talked, he told me you were the one who came up with the idea of taking advantage of your fame in this manner, endorsing those shops on the Citadel when you were working for Cerberus.”

“That’s not fair,” Shepard protests. “We needed those discounts. Weapons to buy, Collectors to beat, that sort of thing. I swear, Cerberus spent a few billion credits bringing me back from the dead and then skimped on discretionary funds,” she grouses. “It was the first sign of the Illusive Man’s indoctrination if you ask me.”

“I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel,” Tali intones before coughing.

Ashara rolls her eyes. “All right, Miss Not-Vas-Normandy-Anymore, I think we’re calling it a night. The guest room should be all set up for you down the hall.”

“It is just as well we turn in now anyway,” Liara adds, “Moira will probably wake us up at an excessively early hour.”

Shepard grins. “Hey, I like getting up early. It’s not my fault I was a soldier and you were an academic.”

Liara shakes her head in annoyance. “In that case, when she starts school next year, you can be the one who drives her there.”

“Happy to do it,” she volunteers. “It’s more or less on the way to work anyway.” Ashara got her own education at the public school on Mindoir, and in a vacuum she’d be perfectly happy sending Moira to a similar one. Despite that though, she and Liara have decided to enroll their daughter in a private school that’s a popular choice for many of the daughters of prominent asari in this part of Thessia. Commander Shepard and Liara T’Soni’s daughter will be a celebrity anywhere she goes, but at Galina Academy, it won’t be as bad and the place is accustomed to handling the security concerns that come with their charges’ fame.

Tali leaves for the guest room and Liara’s hand closes around Shepard’s own. “Did you mean that, love? About being the one to take Moira to school.”

"Of course. I’m happy to help you out.” Liara’s work as an information broker is strictly part time at this point, but with Moira heading off to school soon, her wife is interested in resuming her archeological work, which even if conducted in a lab at nearby Kosia University, will take up a goodly chunk of time.

"Well, I appreciate it.”

"How much?”, Ashara asks playfully.

"Let us go upstairs, and I can show you.” Liara’s voice is a low purr and Ashara licks her lips with anticipation. She might just not be so eager to get up tomorrow morning after all.

 

Three months later…

Edric Turner closes the dossier on the terminal in front of him and prepares to make the final call. It’s taken three months for him to find the right specialists to carry out this job. Miranda Lawson is a dangerous person with powerful friends; anyone willing to accept a contract on her has to be either stupid, crazy, cocky or desperate, and most of those sorts of people aren’t worth his time. Still, he’s managed to find a few with the skills to succeed and the willingness to take on the job and once he secures this final assassin’s cooperation, his work will be done and theirs can begin.

And yet he’s hesitating before he makes the call. Edric knows that when hiring people for this line of work, one can’t exactly expect choir boys, but this one’s reputation is enough to unnerve even him. The photographs from the job he did on the turian home world, to say nothing of those hits in the Terminus Systems… Let’s just say he’d been glad he hadn’t eaten recently when he saw them.

“So, you are the man supplying the money?” The voice on the other end of the line is obviously fake, filtered through some sort of synthesizer that takes the precision already present in the man’s choice of words and gives it a flat, utterly inhuman quality. Edric can hardly complain; his system is designed to mask his voice as well, but the voice is clearly meant to unsettle those the assassin speaks with and in spite of himself, Edric can feel it working.

“That is correct, Mr. Shrike.” A fairly ridiculous alias, in his opinion, but given the man’s reputation, he can be forgiven a few affectations. “I have sent you the details of the job. One target, Miranda Lawson. Collateral damage is not an issue, but you have to deal with any fallout yourself; I cannot become involved directly. The bounty is 10 million credits, payable upon verification of her death. You will not know my identity, but you should have received confirmation that the promised funds have been deposited in the escrow account where Pineas Kroll will release them from if appropriate.” The volus may be a filthy little toad, but he has an impeccable reputation as a broker of such deals as well as for being a creature who knows how to keep a secret.

“Is mere death sufficient?”, the assassin asks as calmly as if he were enquiring about Edric’s coffee preferences. “I can prolong the event for as long as you like.”           

“No, her death will be enough.” He wouldn’t mind if Miranda suffers, but this is business and once you let your emotions get the better of you, it’s easy to make mistakes.

“But you will not be concerned if I indulge myself?” Even through the synthesizer, there’s a chilling eagerness in the man’s voice at the prospect, a sadistic glee that he’s only barely trying to disguise.

“No, the methods used are entirely at your discretion. But don’t underestimate this woman. Miranda Lawson is a formidable opponent.”

“Of course she is. It’s one of the two reasons that I responded to your offer.”

Edric smirks to himself. It’s always the same with these people. “The other being the money, I would presume.”           

“No," that calm, cold voice replies, "It is not.”


	12. Lunchtime

A warm breeze blows through her dark hair, she takes a sip of her water, and Miranda Lawson realizes that she’s in a good mood. It’s not a common occurrence. Shepard may have drained some of her cynicism away, but between her upbringing and her time with Cerberus, she still tends to look at life through a dark lens.

Not today, though. Today, life is good. Her transfer to Grissom Academy as a Senior Research Director has been approved, her new living quarters with Jack are being set up even now, and with a couple of weeks leave before she starts her new job, she has some free time to see her sister here on Ilium. She’s even abandoned her usual attire for a white shirt and dark slacks; no need to look like an Alliance scientist when she’s on vacation.

Her nibbles on one of the free rolls thoughtful provided by the restaurant are interrupted when Miranda looks up and sees Oriana approaching her table. Her sister is wearing a bright blue blouse and a brown skirt that seems to Miranda to be a tad short, but perhaps that’s just the big sister in her talking. More importantly, she looks happy.

“Hey, Miri. It’s great to see you.” Her sister smiles brightly and comes over to Miranda, wrapping her arms around her. Miranda’s always amazed by how open and warm her sister is. Physically, the years have only increased the physical similarities between them, thanks in large part to Miranda’s slowed aging process. Emotionally, though, all of the suspiciousness and coldness that her life instilled in Miranda passed Oriana by and the older Lawson sister is more grateful than she can say for that mercy.

“Hello, Ori.” Her clone sister starts looking over the menu and Miranda takes the opportunity to recommend a sandwich featuring a fish of Thessian origins.

“Since when do you know the menus on Nos Astra?”, Ori asks, surprised by her familiarity with the restaurant.

“I used to do a lot of business here. Our mission against the Collectors brought the _Normandy_ to Ilium a number of times and I used to get lunch here at the Spearbird Café whenever we had shore leave.”

“Shepard used to eat here?” Oriana laughs. “I’m surprised they don’t have a plaque up to commemorate the event. On this spot, Commander Shepard once had a muffin and a cup of Thessian tea…”

Miranda smiles a wry smile. “Actually, she didn’t. When were in Nos Astra, she rarely had a lot of spare time to lunch with her crew. When she wasn’t busy with work, Liara used to live not far from here…”

“Say no more.” Ori’s own smile turns mischievous. “Speaking of romance, big sister, you told me you had an update on that front.”

“Indeed.” She wanted to tell her sister the big news in person. “I’ve accepted a transfer from the Alliance research facility in Seattle to Grissom Academy. Jack and I are moving in together.”

“That’s great, Miri. About time you two stopped doing that long distance b.s.” Miranda isn’t surprised that Oriana is excited for her. Her sister and Jack only met once, a year or so ago at her place in Seattle, but the two most important people in her life got along almost disturbingly well and ever since, Ori’s been gently pushing Miranda into deepening her relationship with Jack. “When’s it happening?”

“As soon as this trip is over. I’ve got a few weeks leave while the transfer is arranged and then it’ll happen.”

“Well, I’ll have to come by and visit. At least once you two have finished, uh, christening the new place. I imagine the first week or two, there’ll be a distinct lack of pants.”

“Ori!”

“Sorry, just joking Miri. See, this is why Jack is good for you. She really helps you to loosen up.” She’s probably right, though Miranda prefers to think of it as her helping Jack learn to behave like an adult.

“What about you?,” Miranda asks, eager enough to change the subject. “How are things with Brad, the neuroscience grad student?”

“Oh, I broke up with him like a month ago.”

“Did something happen?”

“Nah, not really.” She shrugs. “Unlike you, I don’t think I’m quite in the settling down phase of my life right now. I’m just dating around, keeping my options open.” Miranda smiles. What a delightfully mundane point of view for her sister to have.

“And graduate school? Are you making progress with your thesis proposal?”

“Yeah, it’s coming along well, I’m thinking of…”

She never does finish that sentence.

 

Moments Earlier…

Sina Theramasus frowns as she looks through the scope of her sniper rifle at the table beneath her. Even under normal circumstances, the dark purple skinned asari finds it hard enough to differentiate between humans, but this is ridiculous. She tracked the two of them here through the little sister’s email, but while she was setting up her shot, they both arrived and now she finds she can’t easily tell the two women apart.

Once, that would have been more of a problem. The Code of the Justicar is very clear: while the guilty and those actively hindering her missions should be dealt with ruthlessly, innocents could not be harmed. A bright line had been drawn between those who merited death and those who did not, and it had been her duty to maintain that line.

But that was a long time ago and the fool who believed in those things had died in the ashes of Helline Province. She had spent two weeks fighting her way across Thessia to reach her family’s ancestral home, only to find that it was all gone. Her daughter the florist, her little sister the courtesan, her older sister the commando, her mother, her aunts, her cousins, all of them had burned together when the war came to Thessia. Some had been good people, some less so. It didn’t matter. The Reapers slew all of them, and in the process, they revealed to Sina the true nature of life.

The galaxy is a pointless, amoral place. The good and the bad alike prosper or fail, and it does not matter which of those two you are. The only sensible thing to do is to look out for yourself, to take all that life has to offer and not worry about the galaxy, because it is surely not worrying about you.

Fortunately, though she may have wasted 200 years of her life following the foolish blather of the Code, the time hasn’t left her bereft of useful skills. Hunting the guilty and hunting those with a price on their heads are very similar jobs; one just pays better. It’s also a lot less problematic sometimes. Once, she would have worried that the human in the blue blouse might not be her target. Now, she just reminds herself that bullets are cheap and that this job is very, very lucrative.

 

The first thing Miranda sees is the spot, a red bloom that spreads across the front of Oriana’s blouse. Her sister jerks backwards, blood rather than words coming out of her mouth, and instinct takes over after that. Miranda hurls herself across the table and into Oriana, pulling the two of them to the ground an instant before the second shot impacts. Her cup explodes in a shower of glass and water but the former operative scarcely notices, throwing up a biotic barrier to protect her sister as she desperately scans the area, looking for the shooter.

All around her, people are panicking, asari and a variety of other races fleeing from the erupting violence. But her attention is on her sister. Ori looks bad. Blood is coming out of her chest and mouth, but there’s nothing Miranda can do for her now, especially not with that sniper still out there.

A third shot impacts against her barrier, but while it holds, Miranda can feel the strain. It won’t last long and she can’t just stay here and wait for help to arrive. All she’ll do is get both of them killed. Her only chance is to move, hopefully drawing the shooter away, and hope that she’s the target. After all, who’d want to hurt Oriana?

“Hang on,” she whispers to her sister and then she runs, dashing towards the relative safety of the café. She rolls as she nears her destination, but in spite of her best efforts the sniper still hits her again. Her barrier breaks and she crashes through the entrance, pain erupting from the impact point along her back. Grunting, she manages to pull herself inside, only to see a light blue skinned asari next to her drop to the ground in a spray of blood, struck down by another shot from her unseen assailant. Miranda lurches to her feet and looks around. Based on the further shots, she now has some idea of where the shooter is probably located: an office building still under construction across the street, and she retreats further into the café, out of the line of fire from that vantage point.

 

“Fuck the Goddess,” Sina mutters under her breath. The Lawson still moving has the combat reflexes she’d expect from her target, which means she must have shot Oriana. Still, no sense in getting down on herself now. She has a job to finish. Slinging the sniper rifle across her back, she draws her heavy pistol and leaps out through the unfinished window frame, her biotics letting her glide down gently to the street below. The avenue is in chaos, people running or ducking under cars, tables, or whatever else they can find, but in the confusion, one foolish soul does stand out.

“Stop right there!” The turian rushes towards her, reaching into his pocket for something, but before he can clear holster, she turns and puts a single bullet between his eyes and as his lifeblood seeps out onto the pavement, her only thought is “What an idiot.” Why die for something that doesn’t even concern you?

Scanning the café, she catches sight of Miranda. The former operative has wisely hidden herself near the back, trying to find camouflage among the frightened customers, but Sina has been tracking people far too long to be so easily evaded. Leveling her pistol, she prepares to make an end of it.

 

As the tall asari strides towards her, whips of blue light enveloping her body and reflecting off of her lightweight black armor, Miranda rapidly assesses her options. Hiding hasn’t worked, and with the pain in her back, she doubts she can outrun the assassin. Besides, she can’t leave her alone with Ori. Even if he sister isn’t the target, she could be taken hostage if Miranda escapes.

Attack it is then. Even as the rest of the people in the café scatter, Miranda hurls herself forward, her body encased in biotic power. Two shots slam into her, but her barrier holds well enough and she crashes into the assassin, her fist releasing a powerful burst of energy as she does.

The asari staggers backwards, her heavy pistol flying out of her grasp, but she has barriers too, and she doesn’t go down easily. She hurls a strong biotic blast at Miranda that the human barely dives out of the way of, a chair behind her exploding from the impact. Before she can get back to her feet, a savage kick catches Miranda in the stomach. She crashes backwards into the store counter and when a biotically charged fist follows after her, she’s only just able to get her hands up to block it. Her biotics absorb some of the impact, but she still feels a carpal or two break, the scream of bone grinding against bone ripping through her nervous system.

She spins, kicking at the asari’s legs, but the assassin jumps over her strike. It leaves gets her slightly off balance though, and rolling upwards, Miranda crashes into her mid-section. She wraps her arms around the asari, and pile drives her into the ground, slamming her head against the hard wood of the café floor with all the strength she can muster. Pushing back the pain, the former operative summons up a reservoir of biotic energy from deep within herself, attempting to generate a killing blast, needing to end this quickly. The asari counters her though, her own power blocking Miranda’s strike. The operative’s head burns with effort, sweat pouring down her face as she tries to gain the upper hand in their biotic wrestling match, and for the first time, she has a clear look at her attacker.

“Who the hell are you?’, she snarls, unable to recall having ever seen this asari before in her life. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?”

With a sudden burst of energy, the assassin hurls Miranda off of her, sending her crashing into a pastry display case. Glass shards break off in her hair and blood starts to drip down onto her face even as her head spins with the force of impact. “Nothing,” the asari sniffs disdainfully, picking her pistol up from the floor. “The money’s just too good.”

She fires and Miranda can’t move quickly enough to get out of the way, only barely able to raise enough of a shield to keep a hole from being blown clear through her chest. As it is, she can feel a rib crack under the impact and she knows she won’t be able to last much longer. How could she have been so sloppy? In the old days, she never would have let herself be taken off guard like this, unarmed and unaware. Now, she’s going to lose everything. Her future with Jack, maybe her sister’s life, all gone because she was careless.

The asari raises her gun to fire again, but though there’s a crack of gunfire, it doesn’t come from the assassin. She lurches forward, and through Miranda’s bloodstained vision, she sees two other asari dressed in the uniforms of the Nos Astra police force standing behind her would-be killer. The assassin hesitates for a split second, but quickly makes a choice, hurling a biotic wave at the police officers. When they stagger backwards, she runs, leaping through a shattered window and taking off into the confusion and out of Miranda’s sight.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in her head and torso, the former operative drags herself to her feet and staggers back towards the street she came in from. “Hold on, ma’am,” one of the police officers tries to tell her, concern for Miranda’s pitiful condition written all over her pretty teal face. “Lie down. Wait for medical help to get here.”

“No.” She forces herself forward. She has to see to her sister first. She can’t rest until she knows Oriana is going to be all right. When she reaches the remains of their table, she sees Ori still lying on the ground.   Though most of the people have fled, one brave salarian hovers over her sister. “How, how is she,” Miranda chokes out.

The salarian looks up at her but Miranda’s gaze has locked on Oriana. Her sister’s face is pale, her eyes open and unmoving. Even before she hears the words, she knows in her gut what he’s going to say next. Everything feels like it’s happening in slow motion, a horror film she can’t pause. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, the words sounding like they’re coming from a million miles away. “She’s dead.” Miranda knows the sound she hears next is her own scream, but after that, the rest is lost.


	13. Not a Drill

With a roar, the young krogan warrior throws himself at Ashara, but a split second before his head can make contact with her torso, she dives to the side. Already committed to the charge, he’s caught off-balance, and the biotic shockwave she hurls throws him into the dirt with a monstrous crash. He starts to rise, but before he can regain his feet, she presses her pistol to the back off his head, resting it against a vulnerable point between two of his armored plates.

“And that”, she says sharply to the assembled audience, “Is how fast you can end up dead if you’re not careful.”

The defeated krogan gives a growl of frustration, but from the side of the training field, she hears an amused chortle. “I told him he’d just make a fool of himself taking you on but you can’t tell these kids anything.”

“Really? Kids?” She snorts with amusement. “Grunt, you’re about eleven years old.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got experience. Isn’t that right boys?”

Most of the krogan and a few of the asari laugh and Shepard joins in. “All right,” she orders when things have quieted down a bit, “This time we’re going to switch it up. Krogan on defense, asari on offense.”

One of the krogan roars, “Leave defense to the turians. Krogan attack!”

“Not always. Besides, even if that were true, you should still learn to see the battle from the other side. Now hop to it!”

Her advanced students and Grunt’s soldiers get started on their exercises and she heads over to join her old friend in observing them. “It’s an impressive group you’ve got here, Grunt. They seem like excellent warriors, aside from a few knuckleheads.”

“Hah, that’s just natural krogan enthusiasm.”

“Well, they still need to learn how to temper it. Have you seen some of those new salarian shotguns? I don’t care how much enthusiasm or how many redundant organs you have, you still don’t want to take a few rounds from one of those to the torso.”

“Yeah,” he concedes, “Those pyjacks might not be much as fighters, but they do make some nice toys.”

He chuckles to himself as Ashara shouts at one group of asari, “You’re missing the hole. See how the krogan are overextended along the center of their line? You need to hit them there instead of picking away at the edges.”

The soldiers salute before returning to their exercises while Grunt asks her a question. “So, are you still having fun here? The asari always seemed a little soft to me. I was worried you might be getting bored training them.”

“Soft, huh?” She raises her eyebrows incredulously. “You going to tell Liara that tonight at dinner?”

“Heh, not likely.”

“What do you have to worry about?”, she baits him, “I thought you said the asari were soft?”

“Yeah, well, those asari didn’t used to be the Shadow Broker.”

“Smart move.” She grins at the giant krogan. “I guess you really do have experience. But no, I don’t get bored with work. I love running the training here at the academy. Plus, I spend a little time with my foundation, and when you throw in the occasional diplomatic consult, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. What about you?”

“Never better. Good soldiers, good booze, plenty of breeding requests…”

Just then her omni-tool buzzes with a call from her wife and Ashara excuses herself, stepping aside to answer it. “Hey, Liara, what’s up?”

Her wife’s image looks distressed. “Ashara, we have a problem.”

“What is it?”

“I received a message from an old police contact on Illium, someone I worked with before I was the Shadow Broker. She told me that they recently had a sniper attack in a café in Nos Astra. There was a woman there who fought with the assassin before the police arrived. She was taken to a nearby hospital for the injuries she sustained in the fight, but fled after leaving a fake name.”

“Interesting, but why did this contact call you about it?”

“Because this is a picture of the injured woman. She recognized her from that extra-net special.”

An image of Miranda Lawson, battered and bloody but still clearly recognizable, appears on Shepard’s omni-tool. “Oh, hell,” the former Spectre growls, “Does she know what the assassination attempt was about?”

“No, but she is looking into it further.”

“Have you called Miranda yet?”

“I tried. Her omni-tool is inactive.”

Ashara takes a breath. Miranda can look after herself, but to Shepard, she’ll always be a part of her crew and she still feels responsible for her, especially given all that she did to bring Ashara back from her brushes with death. “Okay, I’ll be home soon. Find out what you can.”

She ends the call and heads back over to Grunt. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.” She yells out to the purple skinned asari giving pointers to some of her other students, “Elphi! Come over here.”

The junior instructor joins the two of them. “What’s up, Shepard?”

“Something’s come up that I have to look into. You think you can take over the exercises today?”

“Glad to. Everything okay?”

“I’m not sure. Miranda may be in trouble.”

She nods. “Go, boss. Grunt and I will be fine here.” She smiles up at the big krogan. “Won’t we?”

“Yeah, we’re good… Miranda…” He shakes his giant head. “She always looked at me like I was going to piss on the furniture.”

Ashara considers mentioning the night after Grunt’s rite of passage, but decides she doesn’t have the time. Besides, in his defense, anyone who drunk that much ryncol was bound to do something stupid.

Arriving at her house half an hour later, Shepard knows right away that the situation has gotten dire. Liara’s face is ashen and she can tell there’s something the asari isn’t looking forward to telling her. Steeling herself against the worst, she gives her wife a quick kiss before asking, “What’s wrong?”

“I got the full report on the shooting,” she says, clearly struggling with the news she has to give. “Shepard, Oriana was killed in the attack.”

“Oh, god.” Ashara rubs her face with her hand as she tries to absorb the loss. She didn’t know Oriana that well, having only spent time with the woman after rescuing her on Sanctuary, but she knows what she meant to Miranda. Her sister was the only family the former operative had and the horrible pain she must be feeling now is one Ashara knows terribly well. “Do they know who the assassin was?”

“An asari. They are still trying to identify her, but it had the earmarks of a professional hit. They suspect Miranda may have been the real target.”

“So the killer is still out there, and there may be more of them as well? I need to find her, Liara. Fast.” She can feel herself snapping back into “commander” mode.

Thankfully, Liara understands. “I know you do. I have already called Aethyta. She can look after Moira while we’re away.”

“You don’t have to come. This is my responsibility.”

“I may not be as close to Miranda as you are, love, but she gave you back to me twice.” She reaches out and strokes Ashara’s face. “I owe it to her to do whatever I can.”           

“I love you.” She kisses the asari on the cheek. “Do we have any idea where she is?”

“No, I…” She hears a twinge of regret in Liara’s voice. “I really am not much of an information broker anymore, am I?” Archeology was her real calling, and more and more, Liara has been spending her time on that. Ashara can’t blame her, but right now, her old resources would be pretty helpful. “I have gotten in touch with Feron, and a few of my other old contacts. Hopefully, they will have something for us by the time we get to Illium.”

“When do we leave?”

“I have booked us on a ten o’clock flight.”

“All right, I’ll go get ready. And Liara,” she adds affectionately, “I’m glad you’ll be with me.”

 

“Mommy and daddy are going away for a few days.” Shepard reaches down to give her daughter a hug, carefully balancing the large bag slung over her shoulder.

“Can I come?” Moira had enjoyed her trip to Ashley’s wedding, largely oblivious to the tragedies and violence that had accompanied it, and she keeps asking to go back to space. They’ve been thinking about a visit to Rannoch, but this isn’t exactly going to be a vacation.

“Not this time, dear.” Liara adds a hug of her own. “We have some business to do, so you will be staying here with your grandfather.”

The dark skinned old asari smiles at Moira. “That’s right, kiddo, it’ll just be you and me for a little while.”

“Yeah!” Moira claps her hands excitedly.

“Well, you two have fun.” Shepard tries not to worry too much about what exactly that fun will entail. Aethyta may seem irresponsible sometimes, but Ashara reminds herself that she did raise several daughters of her own after all.

“Make sure you are on your best behavior for her, Moira,” Liara instructs, before adding semi-seriously, “But if she says any words you do not know, just do your best to forget them.”

“Hey!”, Aethyta protests.

“Seriously,” Shepard tells her father-in-law, “We really appreciate the help.”

“No worries. Anyway, she’s still at a fun age. Just wait till the uncontrolled biotics kick in.”

Ashara looks over at her wife. “Uncontrolled biotics?”

“As a naturally biotic species, we do not require training to use them but rather to control them. It is why some degree of instruction on this subject is obligatory in asari schools. When they first manifest though, generally in our mid-twenties, there are often accidents.”

Shepard sighs and Liara adds teasingly, “Don’t worry, we won’t let her near your model ships until she gets control of them.”

Ashara laughs. “All right, we have to go. I love you, Moira.”

“Bye, daddy. Bye, mommy,” As they go down to the car, their daughter waves to them and Ashara feels a twinge of regret at having to leave her behind.

“You know I’m sorry about this, Liara. The way I run off after my crew when they’re in danger; I know it can’t always be easy.”

“Don’t worry, love,” her bondmate reassures her. “Your care for your crew helped bring us together in the first place and right now, Miranda needs our help.”

Shepard just nods. She appreciates her wife’s comfort but though she and her daughter always cheer Ashara up, she also knows that like the Alliance ship that rescued her from Mindoir, in some ways they’re already too late.


	14. Hunting

It’s almost closing time when Miranda slips inside the jewelry store. She’s waited until all of the customers have left; though she’s confidant her target won’t go to the police, the last thing she needs is an innocent bystander interrupting her tonight. The dark blue-skinned asari behind the counter looks up at the sound of her footsteps in the empty store.

“Hello, ma’am. We’re closing in a few minutes but perhaps there’s something I can help you with?”

“That remains to be seen.” The merchant gives her a puzzled look and before the asari can react, Miranda grabs her by the front of her shirt and gives her a biotically enhanced shove into the glass display case behind her.

“What do you want?”, the dazed woman mumbles, “Money?”

 Miranda vaults over the counter and slaps the asari hard across the face. “Shut up and listen you stupid cow,” the operative snaps, “Because I am in no mood to repeat myself. I know that this cheap crap you call jewelry isn’t your real business.” The asari’s eyes go slightly wide and Miranda sees the beginnings of a biotic aura appear around her. Her own biotics flare up brighter and stronger. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Something dark in her eyes warns the storeowner not to try her and the asari lets her biotics drop. “What do you want?”

“I know you manipulate data records for people who wouldn’t be able to get through customs here otherwise and I’m looking for one of your clients. She’s an asari: tall, dark purple skin, rather predatory looking.”

“What do you want with…”

Miranda cuts her off with a punch to the gut. The asari doubles over, coughing and Miranda growls, “That’s not your concern. All you need to worry about is whether or not you’ve seen her.”

The asari groans. “I swear, I haven’t done work for anybody like that recently. I don’t know anything about her.”

Miranda shoves her against the remains of her case, unconcerned about the shattered glass that cuts into the back of the asari’s head. “Seeing is believing. Lets go have a look at your system and confirm that, shall we?”

 

“Hey, over here.”

Liara and Shepard are barely off of the ship when they hear a voice calling to them. Liara winces reflexively; her first thought is that even though she had registered them under aliases, some of her bondmate’s many admirers are waiting for them at the spaceport. A second later though, she places the voice and her dread turns to gladness.

“Feron!” She leads Shepard over towards with the drell. “What a pleasant surprise. You really didn’t have to come and meet our flight in person. You could have just sent the information to me.”

Feron shrugs. “It has been too long since I saw both of you, and anyway, I was only a day or so out from Ilium when you called me.”

Liara smiles warmly at her old associate. “Well, we both appreciate it.”

“Think nothing of it. Much of my business these days is based on contacts you gave me when you retired anyway. Helping you find your friend is the least I can do.”

“Sorry to cut the pleasantries short,” Shepard apologizes, “But it is a bit of an emergency. Can you tell us what you’ve got on Miranda?”

“Of course. I assume you have rented a car. I can fill you in on the way to your hotel.”

They all get into a nearby skycar, and as Ashara drives, Feron takes out a data pad, flicking through a collection of intel reports. “So, in some respects,” he tells them, “Ms. Lawson has been keeping a low profile. She hasn’t made any extranet calls from her omni-tool, and wherever she’s been staying, I can’t find it.”

“So, we’ve got nothing?”, Ashara asks from the front seat. Her voice sounds calm, but her worry is clear to her wife’s experienced ear.

“Not quite. Miranda has been much less discrete in her dealings with the criminal underworld. An information broker, who, as it turns out owes me a favor, gave her the names of the principle hackers in Nos Astra who could’ve helped someone with the record this assassin has get past customs.”

“Her record? Does this mean that you have indentified the killer?”, Liara asks hopefully.

“I have.” Feron seems pleased with himself. “Some of the cops at the scene got a decent look at her, and the contact that originally tipped you off to the case passed me along the sketch. I believe that we are looking for Sina Theramasus.”

Sina Theramasus sounds familiar to Liara, not from her time as the Shadow Broker, but from some more distant part of her past. “I cannot quite place the name,” she admits, “But I feel as I should be able to.”

“She used to be a justicar,” Feron informs her. “A good one too if you believe the stories.”

A light goes on in Liara’s head. “I read about her exploits in an issue of _Justicar Heroes_ when I was a girl. She single-handedly took down a salarian terrorist group that was going to destroy a luxury liner as I recall. I have not heard that name in a long time though.”

“She was believed to be dead,” Feron tells her, “Killed in the war. She resurfaced a few years ago though, but not as a justicar. She now works as a contract killer. Very dangerous, and only takes high end work.”

Liara shakes her head. “That is quite the fall from grace. Why would she do such a thing.”

“The war changed people,” Shepard says from the front seat. “Even the ones who survived often ended up with a lot of scars.”

“Indeed.” Feron looks distantly out the window. He certainly experienced more than his own share of suffering at the hands of the old Shadow Broker. “But though I don’t have her location, I do think I know how you can find Miranda. I have the information here on the remaining hackers. I’ll have my people sitting on the other three, but this one, here, is the best bet of the people your friend hasn’t visited yet.” He points to a photo of an older salarian. “He runs his own electronics shop downtown, looks legit, but he’s dirty to the core. You probably should stake his place out first.”

“Sounds good,” Shepard says.

“One more thing, Liara,” Feron adds. “Miranda hasn’t been gentle with these people. None of them have gone to the authorities because they don’t want to expose their shady business activities, but if this keeps up, she’s going to kill somebody. That, they’ll have to get involved in.”

Shepard sighs. “Then we better get to her before that happens. Any clue as to the when?”

“Her visits have taken place at night,” Feron tells them, “So you’ve got a little while yet.”

“Very well,” Liara answers. “We will get settled at the hotel and then make our way to the electronics store. Send the location to my omni-tool. And Feron, thank you again.”

He nods. “It was my pleasure, Liara. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

 

Liara has booked them a suite at the Ilium Grand, and as she drops her bags on the floor, Ashara takes a moment to try and appreciate the lovely view of downtown Nos Astra. “It’s a great room,” she tells Liara after a kiss. “I could definitely enjoy vacationing here under better circumstances.”

“Listen, love,” her wife tells her, responding to her unspoken fear, “I’m sure we’ll get to Miranda before it’s too late. “Feron has supplied us with excellent intelligence.”

Ashara forces a smile. “You know he likes you, right?”

Liara blushes, her face turning a darker shade of blue. Her increased confidence means she doesn’t do that nearly as much as she used to, but Ashara always finds it adorable. “Do you really think so? I am so bad at noticing such things.”

Shepard sits down on the bed, kicking off her shoes. “True enough. It certainly took you long enough to figure you I was interested,” she laughs, thinking back fondly to their awkward flirtations aboard the SR-1.

Liara crawls on top of her, the warmth of her body a comfort to Ashara. “I was not the only one who was uncertain.”

“Fair point.” She kisses Liara’s neck. “But yeah, Feron definitely wishes you weren’t taken.”

Liara grins. “You do not seem overly concerned.”

She runs her hands across the asari’s back, keeping her close. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re going to leave me for him. Besides, you’re plenty understanding about all the attention I get.” A good thing too. From Kaiden to Samantha to the bags of fan mail she still receives, it’s good that Liara doesn’t flip out about people flirting with her.

The archeologist plants a series of small kisses on her face. “You know that I trust you, Ashara.”

“And I trust you. Besides,” she adds, her mind sadly falling out of this pleasant diversion, “We’ve got bigger problems than a drell with a crush. What Feron said about Miranda’s escalating violence… I worry that she may be losing herself.”

“It is understandable that she would be reacting after what happened to her.”

“It’s true,” Ashara replies, “God knows I understand. But that doesn’t mean Miranda isn’t going to get herself hurt. I keep feeling like we should call Jack. Shouldn’t she know what’s going on? I mean, if something had happened to you, I’d want to know.”

“Perhaps, but if Miranda hasn’t done it yet herself then I feel we should respect her wishes, at least until we know what her reasons are.”

 

The motel room is a real shithole. Miranda would be surprised to learn that the bed sheets have been changed since the Reaper War ended and the vid-screen in her room probably goes back to the damn Krogan Rebellions. Still, it’s quiet, out of the way, and it doesn’t check the IDs of its guests, which a good deal more important than her right now.

Slumping back on the thin mattress, she opens up her omni-tool. She turned off the external connectivity after the attack. She doesn’t know how that assassin found her and her sister, and until she does, she’s not making any calls. The last message Jack left her is still saved on it though, and in spite of herself, Miranda can’t stop listening to it.

“Hey, babe it’s me.” Jack sounds so cheerful and a twinge of pain hits the operative at how distant that makes her lover feel to her. “So, your stupid furniture arrived here today. Not sure what you think we need with all these lamps. I mean, you know the new place is going to have fucking lights, right? Anyway, just wanted to say hi and see if you’re having a good time with your sister. Talk to you later.”

The recording ends and Miranda shakes her head in disgust. What a fool she’d been. She thought she’d moved on from the cold-hearted Cerberus bitch she used to be. She thought she got to have decorative lamps, and a live-in girlfriend, and nice lunches on spring days on Ilium. She got stupid, she got careless, and now her sister is dead because of it. Her sister, who Miranda risked her life time and again to protect. Her sister, who never hurt anyone in her life, was gunned down in the street and it’s her fault.

She doesn’t know who this assassin was working for, but it has to be about her. No one would have wanted to kill Ori. She must have been the target, hunted down by some enemy that she’d forgotten, burned by some job that she left unfinished.

Now she’s back where she belongs. Alone. An operative with an enemy to destroy. That’s all she ever really was, all that she deserves to be. She can’t even call Jack for help. She knows the convict would get on a ship and come here if Miranda asked her to, but she can’t do it. She’s already gotten one of the only two people she loves killed and she can’t risk the same thing happening to the other.

Miranda closes the omni-tool. Outside, she can see the sun has started to set. Good. That means it’s time to go to work. She picks up the half-eaten remnants of the asari pastry on her nightstand and heads for the door. She doesn’t really have much of an appetite these days, but she does need to keep her strength up. After all, it wouldn’t do to collapse before she’s finished hunting.


	15. Risks

“Hello, Raelon.”

The old salarian practically jumps out of his skin at the sound of Miranda’s voice emerging from the darkness of his closed electronics store.

“Oh, um, hello, Miss Lawson,” Raelon stammers, his eyes darting to and fro.

“Good, you already know who I am. I imagine you thought you’d have a little more warning before we spoke though.” She tosses the disabled remnants of an alarm box at the salarian. “Someone in your line of work should really invest in a better security system. Particularly with the kind of clients you take on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks,” he replies a little too quickly, trying to hide the movement of his hands under the counter.

“Sure,” she tells him, her voice dripping with faux friendliness, “You could make a move for whatever weapon you have down there. But keep this in mind: I’ve survived the best assassins Cerberus could throw at me. How likely do you think it is that I’m going to be killed by a scared hacker with a pistol?”

He sighs, bringing his hands back out into plain view. “Improbable, I suppose.”

“Smart boy. Now, we’re going to have a little conversation.”

“Of course. Whatever you want.”

The salarian has an insincere smile pasted across his face but for just an instant, Miranda sees his eyes flicker away from her, looking towards the outside of the store. She feels a tingle in the back of her neck; this isn’t the first time he’s looked away. She turns toward the window, just in time to see two salarians in the darkness, one of them raising a weapon…

 

Sitting in the skycar across the street from the electronics store, Shepard sees a nostalgic smile cross her bondmate’s lovely face. “It really has been a while since I did this.”

Ashara raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were ever on a stakeout.”

"I was not always the high-end information broker you met up with on Ilium. When I was starting out in that business, I had to, as humans say, get my hands dirty.” Shepard chuckles and Liara asks, “What is so funny?”

"Just having a hard time picturing you as a hard-boiled detective, hiding out in some dingy warehouse waiting for batarian weapons smugglers to show up.”

Liara sounds vaguely offended. “What, do you think I wouldn’t be capable of doing that sort of work?”

"Nah,” she grins, “I know better than to underestimate you. I just mean it doesn’t seem like your cup of tea.”

“It was not. But it was for the good of the galaxy. The Shadow Broker had to be stopped and I had to build up the resources to do it.”

Shepard leans over and kisses Liara quickly on the lips. “And don’t think the galaxy doesn’t appreciate it. As well as your bondmate.”

“I am glad to hear it,” the asari replies playfully. “I will admit though, being out here like this does give me a craving for the local varieties of cheap takeout food.”

“Well, if we’re stuck here much longer, we can order something. You have a place in… Wait.” Shepard’s trained eye detects motion and she directs Liara’s attention towards the electronics store. A pair of salarians have just stopped in front of it and as the taller of the two unzips a large bag, the former Spectre throws open the door of their rented skycar.

The shorter of the pair turns at the movement even as the taller one is leveling a snub-nosed assault rifle in the direction of the storefront. Shepard draws her pistol a split second faster than the shorter salarian can un-holster his and when a round from her Paladin catches him in the shoulder, his return shot goes wide, streaking off harmlessly into the air. The taller assassin has his hands full well as well. A singularity from Liara staggers him and his assault rifle jerks in his grasp, firing wildly into the store.

 

An instant before the gunfire starts, Miranda throws herself to the ground. The storefront window explodes in a shower of glass but the shots cluster well to the right of the operative, destroying a display of discounted monitors. Bouncing back to her feet, Miranda sees a tall salarian with dark brown skin and a rifle lurching his way out of a singularity field but before he can get clear, she summons her biotics and hurls a powerful blast at her would-be killer. He’s too staggered to dodge it and when the warp hits him, it interacts with the energy of the singularity, exploding in a tiny nova of energy. The assassin is ripped to pieces by the combination of forces and when the light of the detonation fades, she sees a second salarian lying on the ground, knocked out cold by the blast.

Before she can figure out what the hell is going on though, her back explodes with pain, her barriers cracking under the impact of a powerful shot. She spins, only to find herself look at Raelon holding a large pistol. He fires again, but this time she’s able to dodge, taking refuge behind a stack of toasters as the hacker empties his clip at her. Shards of metal explode all around her, and she rolls in the direction of a set of shelves that should provide her with better cover. When she hears the sound of the salarian starting to reload, she draws her own pistol and prepares to fire, but before she can, a familiar voice slices through the din.

 

“Drop it Raelon,” Shepard barks out, Liara standing by her side with her submachine gun drawn.

The salarian’s big eyes go wide at the sight of the famous war hero and her wife and he lets go of his pistol. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Raelon exclaims as it clatters to the floor, “This crazy woman broke into my store and tried to kill me.”

Shepard shoots him a skeptical look. “I’m sure. Come on out, Miranda. It’s me.”

Miranda indeed emerges from behind the bullet-ridden shelves, but Ashara scarcely recognizes her old friend. It’s not that evidence of battle; that she’s used to. The difference goes deeper. There are dark circles around her eyes, and in them, Shepard sees a coldness that reminds her of the woman she first met all those years ago, only angrier. “What’re you doing here?”, the former operative snaps.

Liara seems annoyed by Miranda’s attitude. “I believe we are helping you.”

“I didn’t ask for your help and I don’t need it. Now, get out. This salarian and I have some business to attend to.”

“No,” Raelon insists, his fear real this time, “Don’t leave me alone with her.”

“Then you better give her what she needs,” Shepard says sharply.

The former Spectre locks eyes with the salarian and something he sees there must convince him that he’s not going to weasel out of this, because he goes to the terminal behind the counter and pulls up his files. “Based on previous inquiries, assume this is who you’re looking for.” On the screen is a picture of Sina Theramasus but with the name “Mysa L’Sini” underneath it instead.

Miranda’s eyes tighten and she walks toward Raelon with a dark look on her face. “So you’re the one who helped that bitch get to Ilium. Where is she?” Her voice is a menacing growl and Shepard can tell that it’s no act.

“No idea,” Raelon sputters, “Didn’t think it was a good idea to ask.”

The operative lifts him off his feet with one hand, biotics crackling around her other one as she draws it back. “Are you certain about that? Because if you’re lying to me, I promise that you will become intimately familiar with Cerberus interrogation protocols.”

Shepard grabs the charged arm. “He’s not lying Miranda. There’s no way the assassin would have told him where she was staying.”

Liara downloads the information on the screen to her omni-tool. “We can send the data on her false ID to Feron; he should be able to trace her that way.”

“I can do it,” Miranda growls, “Myself.”

“Goddamn it, Miranda,” Ashara snaps back, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“May I suggest,” Liara interjects, “That we continue this conversation in the skycar unless you two want to have it with the police when they get here. That biotic detonation was not exactly subtle.”

“Why not wait for the police?”, Miranda huffs sardonically, “I’m sure they’d listen to whatever the great Commander Shepard told them.”

Shepard grabs her by the shoulder. “Now, Miranda!” The operative is probably right that she could talk down the cops, but it’s still a hassle they don’t need now.

However reluctantly, the operative does follow Shepard out to the car, but all the way back to the hotel, she says nothing, sitting sullenly in back seat while Ashara drives. The commander can’t remember the last time she felt this kind of tension between her and Miranda. It’s as if all the years of friendship since they first met back on the Lazarus Station have been stripped away.

When they get back to their hotel suite, Ashara asks her wife to send the data to Feron and get to work with him on finding the assassin. She needs some time alone with Miranda anyway, something she trusts Liara to understand.

The asari heads off into the bedroom while Miranda takes a seat on the couch. “Listen, Shepard, I meant what I said before. I don’t need or want your help on this. After Liara gets Theramasus‘ location from Feron, I want you two gone.”

Ashara tries to remind herself that Miranda isn’t in her right mind right now. “You may not want our help, Miranda,” she says as calmly as she can manage, “But maybe you need it. Did you stop to ask how we found you? How those salarians did? You’ve been reckless. Beating up all those hackers left a trail any idiot could follow.”

“And you think I don’t know that?”

“Then what the hell were you doing?” She’s failing at keeping her anger in check, her worries about Miranda and the operative’s seeming lack of self-control aggravating every protective instinct in her body.

“I thought that perhaps I could draw the killer out so that I could deal with her. It seems to have worked, if not with the particular assassin I was looking for.”

“And if we hadn’t been there, what would have happened then?”

“I can look after myself.” Despite her attempt to sound confidant though, there’s an increasingly frantic edge to Miranda’s voice.

“Are you so sure about that? Miranda, this woman used to be a justicar. Getting caught between her and whatever other assassins are after you sounds to me like an excellent way to get yourself killed.”

“And what if it is?”, she screams, her icy attitude melting into a wild rage. “What the bloody hell does that matter? Don’t I deserve it?   Why should I be alive when she isn’t.” Her anger breaks as quickly as it had appeared and Miranda slumps over on the couch, her beautiful face buried in her hands. Ashara sits down next to her friend, putting an arm around Miranda’s shoulder while behind the operative’s hands, she can hear faint sobs. “I got her killed, Shepard. My sister…. I can’t risk it with you and Liara. I can’t be responsible for more of the people I care about getting killed.”

Ashara rubs Miranda’s shoulder comfortingly. “I’m so sorry, Miranda. I know I can’t make it better. But let me help you now. I don’t want to lose any more friends either.”

Miranda squeezes her own head, a shudder running through her body as she makes her decision. “Very well. Stay. I never could get you to do what I bloody well said anyway.”

In spite of everything, Ashara laughs a little at that. “Thank you. Now, do you want to call Jack? I’m sure she must be worried about you.”

“No,” Miranda insists, “You two, all right, but not her. Leave Jack out of this. I can’t risk her getting hurt. I just can’t.”

 

Jack stalks through her apartment, navigating around the stacks of boxes as she tries to resist the urge to check her messages again. Half her shit is already packed in these things, it’s two days until she and Miranda are supposed to move into their new, larger, quarters together, and she hasn’t heard from her girlfriend in almost a week. In a burst of frustration, she slams her fist into a box of clothes, only regretting that it isn’t something more solid. How can Miranda being doing this to her? Doesn’t she know how hard this is for Jack…

Suddenly, her omni-tool buzzes and the biotic jumps to answer it with might be described as unseemly haste. When the calls starts though, her face falls. Instead of her girlfriend, it’s Kahlee Sanders’ voice speaking to her.

“What the fuck do you want?”, the ex-convict snaps, forgetting in her disappointment that, even if they’re friends, the woman is also her boss.

Kahlee doesn’t seem to take offense. She’s pretty easygoing; Jack supposes she’d have to be to have put up with her all this time. “Did I call at a bad time? I was hoping you’d talked to Miranda recently; she’s supposed to have sent me some paperwork regarding her transfer, but I haven’t heard from her in about a week.”

Jack rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, neither have I. She’s fucking flaking on me.”

“Are you sure?,” Kahlee asks, surprised. “Could she have just gotten caught up with her sister and forgotten to call?”

“The cheerleader? Have you met her? She never fucking forgets this shit.” And always gets on Jack’s case when she does, calling her irresponsible. Well, who’s the irresponsible one now, she snarls to herself.

“Have you tried calling and asking her what’s wrong?”

“Yeah. No damn answer. Fuck her if she’s going to walk out like this.” Jack opened herself up to Miranda more than anyone she’s ever met. She’d just gotten to a place where she was able to trust the cheerleader and she really can’t believe Miranda’s pussying out on her now without so much as a fucking word. “I mean, shit,” she continues, “It’s not like I’m not nervous about this too. I mean, what give her the right…”

“Don’t do it.” Kahlee cuts her off gently but firmly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean don’t let this slip away just because she got cold feet.”

“I’m not begging her for shit. She doesn’t want me, she can go fuck herself.”

Over the omni-tool connection, she can hear Kahlee taking a deep breath. “Jack, you know that Admiral Anderson and I used to be together. What you may not know is how long it took us to really make a go of it. For years, I think we knew that we had something special, but we kept finding reasons to put off dealing with it. Careers, separate postings: we had a million excuses why this wasn’t the right moment… And by the time we finally decided to try and make it work for real, the Reapers came. You and Miranda, you’ve got something special too, and take it from me, you’ll end up regretting it if you don’t fight for it when you have the chance.”

“What the fuck do you want me to do? Go hit her over the head and drag her back here? I’m not her fucking mother.”

“Take some vacation time. Go find her. Talk. Get her to tell you what’s wrong. The worst that can happen is you fail and then you’re no worse off than you are now.”

“Fine!” Jack throws up her hands but her tone is grateful. “You made your point.” She ends the call and pulls up her terminal screen, looking for the next flight she can catch to Ilium. At the very least, she tells herself, Miranda’s not walking out on her without at least saying it to Jack’s goddamn face.


	16. Worry

“Are you all right, love?“ Liara places a soft kiss on Ashara’s neck before pulling her bondmate down beside her on the bed. “You seem distant.”

The asari suspects she knows what Shepard’s answer will be. It’s been two days since Miranda agreed to let them help her find the assassin who killed her sister. Most of that time, they’ve been stuck in the hotel. They’re registered at the Ilium Grand under a false name, but if she or Shepard are seen in public, they’re too famous to avoid notice, which in turn might spook their target. Miranda has said little over that time, maintaining instead an angry silence that Liara knows is eating at her bondmate.

"It’s Miranda,” Shepard confirms, pressing herself back into her wife’s arms.

"Time will help her,” the asari suggests. “It did for me after my mother died.”

Ashara sighs. “Probably you’re right. But I’m worried about her in the here and now. I don’t feel good putting her back in the field while she’s still like this.”

"She will insist on coming along when we find the assassin.”

"Maybe so, but we have to keep an eye on her.” Shepard sighs deeply. “She seems so empty, like she’s lost her reason to go on.”

"She still has Jack,” Liara offers. Goddess knows Ashara was a comfort to her when she faced her own losses.

"And she won’t even let us call her,” Shepard points out. “What do you think that means?”

Liara runs her hand through her wife’s dirty blonde hair. These moments have never been easy for her. She can’t fix this, not for Miranda, not even for Shepard. All she can do is comfort the former Spectre. “I don’t know,” she whispers, wrapping a hand around to caress the human’s stomach. “We will just have to keep her alive long enough for her to make some kind of peace with what happened.”

She runs kisses along the side of Shepard’s neck and Ashara reaches down, taking Liara’s hand and bringing it up to her lips so she can kiss it. “You’re good at keeping me out of my own head. Did I ever mention I like that about you?”

"Once or twice perhaps,” she teases. The asari starts to work her other hand underneath the top of Shepard’s tank top, caressing her wife’s firm abs. She can feel the tension in Ashara’s body, and she begins rubbing her breasts, trying to ease it a bit with her touch.

"Do we have time?”, the commander asks even as she arches into Liara’s hand, trying to increase the contact. “Miranda will be back from her walk soon.” Even though the operative sleeps on the couch, it hasn’t felt appropriate for them to make love with her in the suite, especially not with her in this emotional state.

"Perhaps,” Liara smiles, removing her other hand from Shepard’s lips and sliding it down the front of the gym shorts her wife wore to bed. “Do you think you can manage to be quick?”

"I don’t know,” Ashara jokes, biting her lip as her bondmate’s fingers run through the silky hair above her sex. “Wouldn’t that depend on you right about now?”

"I think I’m up to that challenge,” Liara replies before placing another kiss on her wife’s neck. She rolls a stiffening nipple between her fingers, stroking her other hand over Ashara’s damp sex. Shepard shifts her leg backwards, allowing Liara to slip it between her thighs. The asari is only wearing her nightgown and a pair of panties, and the pressure against her clit is welcome, if not sufficient to get her off.

She can worry about that later though. Shepard is delightfully wet by now, and Liara dips her fingers inside her for a few thrusts, coating them in her wife’s arousal before bringing the digits up to her clit. Ashara gasps when she finds it, and when Liara starts drawing circles over the swollen shaft, the asari can feel Shepard starting to let go of the tension that’s been building up in her these last few days.

The sounds she’s coaxing from her wife are having an effect on the archeologist as well and she clenches her thighs tighter, trying to increase the contact with Shepard’s leg even as her mind starts reaching out to the human, craving the deepening of their connection that it brings. She slides easily into the former Spectre’s thoughts, sharing as best she can her faith in her bondmate’s abilities. When she first met Shepard, the commander had possessed a confidence that bordered on arrogance. The losses of the Reaper War had damaged that surety, showing Ashara the hard way that no matter how good she was, there were still people she couldn’t save. Victory and peace have healed many of those wounds, but the pain of so many un-prevented deaths will always be a part of her bondmate.

As Liara’s faith and desire fill her, Shepard moans and the asari speeds up her movements, eager to feel her wife’s climax across the bond. The human presses herself against Liara’s touch while her own hand reaches back, sliding into the asari’s panties to caress her hard clit. Liara gasps with pleasure into Shepard’s ear, and that extra jolt of shared stimulation is enough to send Ashara over the brink. She stiffens with her climax even as it spills over into Liara’s mind, pulling her along with her bondmate. Her hips buck into Ashara’s hand, her release coming in shuddering waves.

The asari clutches her wife tightly, but even as she catches the flickering question in Ashara’s mind as to whether there’s time for more, Liara hears the sound of the door opening in other room.

“I suppose not,” she sends along with a twinge of her regret as she breaks the meld.

“It’s okay,” Shepard whispers, “And Liara, thank you.”

“No need,” the asari purrs, “I think we both needed to take our minds off of everything.”

“Well,” Ashara smiles, turning over to wrap her arms around Liara, “I can’t think of a better way to do it.”

 

As Jack walks into the lobby of the Nos Astra Plaza hotel, she can practically taste the bile in her throat. There’s still no answer when she calls Miranda, and when she tried her here at the hotel the operative is supposed to be staying at, all she got was some fucking asari bitch telling her, “We do not give out information about our guests.” In her desperation, Jack even called Oriana despite the fact that she’s only met Miranda’s little sister once. No answer there either.

“Well,” she tells herself, “They’re going to find me a hell of a lot harder to ignore in person.” Stomping her way up to the front desk, Jack fixes her best smile on the light blue-skinned asari working there. The chick actually reminds her a bit of Liara, but without any of her friend’s charm evident on her haughty face. “Hey,” the biotic says, trying to seem casual, “I need Miranda Lawson’s room number.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the asari replies, looking Jack up and down disdainfully, “But it is not our policy to give out the room numbers of our guests. If you wish, you may leave a message for Ms. Lawson here at the front desk and we will pass it along to her.”

Jack snorts, the smile rapidly fading from her face. “Already did that. Didn’t get a response. So I’m gonna need that room number.”

“That is really not possible.”

Jack’s brown eyes narrow dangerously. Her impulse is to blast this bitch into next week, but these days she’s trying to be a responsible adult. “Listen,” she says, pulling out her Grissom Academy ID, “I’m with the Alliance. I need to see Miranda on official business.”

“Be that as it may,” the asari sneers, “The Alliance has no jurisdiction here. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ll have to ask you to leave. There are other customers waiting.”

Fuck. Jack’s only got one more card left to play before it’s violence time. “All right,” she says, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “You know Commander Shepard, the one who saved you and me and the whole fucking galaxy. She’s the one I need this information for.”

The asari laughs. “Sure. You know Commander Shepard. And I sleep with Aria T’Loak every other weekend. As I said…”

“Wait a minute…” From further down the front desk, a turian looks over in their direction. “Miranda Lawson…. Wasn’t she on ‘Heroes of the Reaper War’? She was one of Shepard’s friends, right?” Jack nods and the turian looks more closely at her. “Come to think of it, I saw you on that show too.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Jack says , “We both know Shepard. So if you could please tell me what room Miranda is in, that’s be great.”

“Sure.” He enters a few key strokes on his screen. “She was in room 23-12 but I haven’t seen her in a few days. A couple of police detectives were here looking for her though. Didn’t find anything, at least if you believe the rumors.”

The asari looks at him askance. “The manager’s not going to like this.”

“Eh, screw her,” he says dismissively. “Shepard saved my brother’s life on Menae. I can always find another job.”

Jack nods appreciatively, but as she walks away from the desk, her stomach is busy twisting itself into a knot. She spent most of the flight here preparing to deliver an epic rant to her wayward girlfriend. Now, she feels like shit for having doubted her in the first place but that’s not her biggest problem. Miranda is missing and she has no idea how to find her. She needs help, and there’s only one person she can trust to give it to her.

 

“How much longer is this going to take?”

On the other end of the call, Shepard can see Feron’s image shift uncomfortably in response to Miranda’s demand. “I have to be discrete with my inquiries,” he protests. “We don’t want Sina to know how close we are to finding her or else she might run and we’ll have to start all over again.”

“I am aware of what’s involved in tracking someone,” Miranda snaps. “I just want to know why it’s taking you so long.”

“Miranda,” Liara says sharply, clearly annoyed that the operative has returned once more to her hostile posture. “Show some consideration. Feron is doing his best, I am sure.”

“It’s okay,” the drell offers, “It shouldn’t be long now. A few hours perhaps, and I’ll have an address for you.”

“Fine.”

Miranda stalks away and Liara ends the call, but just as Ashara thinks of going after her, the commander’s omni-tool starts to buzz as well. She checks the ID and when she does, she grimaces: it’s Jack.

“Do you think you should answer her?”, Liara asks.

Shepard shakes her head. “I’m not blowing her off,” she decides, and before there can be any further discussion, she opens the connection.

Jack’s image appears before them, anxiety written all over the lines of her face. “Shep,” she starts, not bothering with pleasantries, “I need your help. It’s Miranda.”

“What’s wrong?” Ashara’s not sure how much the biotic knows but clearly it’s enough to worry her.

“She was blowing me off, so I followed her here to Nos Astra, but now she’s missing and the cops are looking for her and I’m worried she might be hurt.”

Ashara knows she’s supposed to keep Miranda’s secret, but she hasn’t seen Jack this freaked out since they went to Pragia. There’s real panic in her voice and Shepard can’t ignore that, no matter what she promised the operative. “Jack, she’s here with me and Liara.”

“She’s with you!” The expression of concern on Jack’s face dissolves into one of rage. “Then why the fuck has she been blowing me off? You two aren’t banging her, are you?”

Ashara knows she should laugh at the notion, but right then she can’t bring herself to find any humor in the situation. “No, listen to me. Something has happened. Someone’s trying to kill Miranda and they… Jack, Oriana was killed.”

Jack’s face changes once more, shock filling her big, brown eyes, but before either of them can speak, Shepard hears Miranda’s angry voice behind her. “Shepard! What the bloody hell are you doing?”

Jack’s image turns at the sound of her girlfriend’s voice. “Miranda, hey, I…”

The operative doesn’t stay around to listen though, stalking away from Ashara with an angry scowl. “I knew it was a mistake to let you help. Just stay away from me. All of you.”

Miranda storms out of the room and Shepard turns back to Jack. “What the hell?”, the powerful biotic asks, clearly hurt. “Why did she…”

“It’s complicated. Look, we’re at the Ilium Grand, in room 50-11. Just come over here now and we’ll figure it out together.” Maybe she shouldn’t have told Jack what was going on, but it’s too late now to do anything but move forward.


	17. Friction

As the call with Jack ends, Ashara feels her wife’s hand coming to rest on her shoulder. “Are you sure it was a good idea to tell Jack about Miranda’s situation?”

"What do you want me to have done?’, Shepard growls, her frustration getting the better of the commander.

"I don’t know, but the way that Miranda stormed out just now… I’m worried that you might’ve made things worse.”

"Damn it, I know that.” Shepard slams her fist into the coffee table, “Do you think this is easy for me to figure out?”

"No,” Liara snaps back, “But that does not make it my fault either.”

Ashara shakes her head, annoyed at herself for yelling at Liara. “No, you’re right. I’m just worried. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

Liara’s warm hands rub her shoulders. “And I’m sorry as well. It was probably the correct decision to tell Jack. All of those times I didn’t know if you were alive or dead were almost unbearable. It wouldn’t have been right to leave her that way if you could avoid it.”

Ashara takes a deep breath, her anger dissipating, placing a kiss on the asari’s smooth hand. “It’s just frustrating, this happening again. Like at Ash’s wedding. Whatever grievance this person has against Miranda, why can’t they just let the past rest?”

Liara walks around to sit down next to her bondmate on the couch. “We do not know that’s what this is.” Shepard shakes her head and Liara gives her a kiss on the cheek before continuing. “But assuming you are correct, revenge can be a compelling motive. I remember my anger at the Shadow Broker for what I thought he did to Feron and tried to do to you. The need to find him and even that score was powerful.”

Shepard nods. “I know. But it’ll consume Miranda if she lets it. That’s part of why I told Jack to come here. Miranda has to remember she has someone that needs her to stay alive.”

           

All during the cab ride to the Ilium Grand, Jack hadn’t been able to get her head straight. She wants to hug Miranda. She wants to slap her for freezing her out like this. She wants to run away from all of it. The biotic isn’t any good at this shit, and it’s making her feel panicky and weird.

Last chance to bolt, she tells herself as the elevator lets her off on the 50th floor. The urge is definitely there, but Jack swallows it down as best she can. Kahlee was right; there hasn’t been much good in her messed-up life and this thing with Miranda definitely counts. She’s not gonna run away from that, even if she doesn’t know how to deal with what’s happened to her girlfriend.

As she knocks on the door to Shepard’s room door, the convict braces herself for what’s coming next. She may not have figured out what to say to Miranda, but fuck it, why should she start looking before she leaps now? The door slides open, but the woman waiting to greet her isn’t her girlfriend, but instead her old commander.

"Shepard,” the ex-convict blurts out, “Where is she?”

"Not here, I am afraid,” Liara replies from behind her wife.

"The fuck do you mean ‘not here,’ blue?” Jack doesn’t know how many more emotional twists she can take today.

"She stormed out when I told you what happened to Oriana,” Shepard informs her.

"Why?” Jacks knows this shouldn’t be about her, but it still hurts that the fact that she was coming was enough to send Miranda running for the hills.

Shepard seems to sense her distress, wrapping an arm around the smaller biotic’s shoulder. “Come in.” She sits Jack down on the couch before starting to explain. “Miranda didn’t want me to tell you what happened. She was worried about you getting hurt because of it.”

"Hey,” Jack protests, “What does she think I am, some little doll she needs to keep in a glass case? I can look after myself.”

"She knows that,” Shepard explains, “It’s just… she’s scarred right now and she’s blaming herself for what happened to Oriana. That’s making her push away everyone who cares about her, especially you.”

"Why me?”, the ex-convict asks.

"Because I think you mean more to her than anyone else, now that her sister is gone.”

"Fuck.” Jack’s fingers tug at her short, brown hair, trying to use a little pain to distract herself from what she’s feeling. “I don’t know what to do, Shep,” she confesses. “I mean, I could barely figure out how to handle a relationship when things were going good with us. Now, I got no fucking clue what to do for Miranda.”

Liara comes to sit on Jack’s other side. “Do you love her?”, she asks gently.

Jack nods. “Yeah. I mean I know its kind of a ‘what the fuck,’ but yeah, I do.”

"Then be patient,” Liara replies, “And try your best to be there for her. The rest you can figure out as you go along. For now, we just need to get her through this crisis.”

"What the hell is going on anyway?,” Jack asks, looking for someone to blame, someone she can focus her feelings on. “Who did this?”

Shepard sighs. “The short answer is a justicar-turned-assassin named Sina Theramasus. But we assume someone else hired her for the job. She’s not the only killer we have to worry about either. Liara and I already took care of a pair of salarian hitters when we found Miranda, but we don’t know how many more may be out there.”

"And you let her leave here by herself?”, Jack snaps, her worries suddenly becoming a whole hell of a lot more concrete.

"What did you want me to do?”, Shepard asks, “Tie her to the bed.”

"Hey, works for me.” Well, at least the one time they’d tried it… No, that’s a thought for another time.

“Let me call Feron,” Liara volunteers. “If he has a location on Sina, than that should bring Miranda back here.”

Jack and Shepard agree, and Liara dials up the drell information broker on her omni-tool. When he hears their request, though, he seems confused. “What do you mean, do I have her location yet? I gave it to Miranda twenty minutes ago.”

"You what?”, Jack growls.

"We have not heard from her. Feron,” Liara asks, “Why did you not send it directly to me?”

"Miranda called. She told me you two, were, uh, busy, and said she’d pass it along when you were free.”

"Shit!” Jack leaps up from the couch. “Send us the location, scaly. We better move fast; she’s going after that bitch by herself.”

 

Though it’s a busy afternoon at the Star of Ilium, Miranda is alone as she rides the elevator up to the penthouse. Something in her demeanor must have discouraged company the operative muses darkly, checking the charge on her pistol one last time. It’s just as well that this assassin appears to enjoy indulging herself. Since Sina has the top floor of the hotel to herself, Miranda should enjoy some privacy while she works. Privacy is also the reason she left Shepard and Liara behind. They may be her friends, but they’re heroes and the operative doubts they have the stomach for what she has planned. This asari is going to die, but before she does, she’ll give Miranda the name of her employer.

Standing outside the door to the penthouse suite, Miranda doesn’t bother knocking, instead activating the illegal shunt program in her omni-tool to open the lock. The door slides open but on the other side, she sees not the assassin, but a dark blue-skinned asari maiden who looks younger than Liara, lounging on an overstuffed chair, clad in nothing but a pair of red panties. “Hey,” she says, looking over Miranda in her dark shirt and slacks, “Sina didn’t tell me she was bringing a human in. Guess it’s time for round…”

Miranda silences the tramp with a swift blast of biotic energy, snorting as the asari crumples to the ground unconscious. It looks like she wasn’t wrong about this Sina liking to indulge.

Moving quickly, Miranda heads to the bedroom before the assassin can realize what’s going on. She’s halfway there when her target walks out. Sina Theramasus is wearing a black silk robe to go with an annoyed expression. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she starts, “But I’m not paying you to…”

Her words are cut short when she sees Miranda. The operative raises her pistol and fires twice at the asari’s gut, aiming to wound but not to kill. Sina is too quick with her barriers though and the bullets are stopped, but not before sending the former justicar staggering backwards. She rolls away from Miranda, dodging the biotic blast that the operative sends at her, and unleashes an energy wave of her own. The shockwave impacts Miranda’s barriers, and though it should be enough to stagger her, she presses forward regardless. The rage she’s been feeling since Oriana died is unchained now, blocking out everything else.

Sina tries to get back to her feet, but Miranda stops her with a savage kick to her mid-section, sending her reeling into the bedroom before the operative fires two more shots at the prone asari. The first is stopped by the assassin’s barriers but the second gets through, piercing her shoulder and staining her dark robe with purple blood.

She doesn’t give up easily though, her foot hooking out and catching the operative’s leg. Miranda crashes to the carpeted floor, her pistol dropping out of her grip and the asari dives across the bedroom, going for something on her dresser. Miranda lunges after her, grabbing her right leg, but the left one kicks back into her face, shattering her nose and breaking her hold. Sina’s hand closes around a pistol, but before she can aim it properly, Miranda’s biotics grab the heavy glass lamp on the end table and smash it into the back of the asari’s crest.

The gun goes off anyway, and the bullet grazes Miranda’s arm, drawing blood but not seriously impairing her. The asari is another story, with pieces of glass stuck in her head, her blood is flowing freely down her back. With a scream of rage, she tries a final, desperate biotic assault, her blast knocking the human away from her. Miranda summons her own powers and shoves back, her eyes narrowing as she focuses her hate on the monster who took her sister from her.

Though Miranda suspects that the asari might be stronger than her in a vacuum, Sina’s injuries are taking their toll and it’s her that breaks first. The glow around her body starts to fail and the force of the operative’s attack slams her hard into the wall. The assassin slumps down, laughing through the pain she’s obviously in. “Go on,” she chuckles, “Finish it.”

“Not just yet.” Miranda retrieves her pistol before reaching into her pocket and bringing out a container of medi-gel, dabbing a touch of it on the wounded asari’s head to make sure she doesn’t pass out. “First, you’re going to tell me who hired you to kill me.”

Sina snorts. “Why would I do that? We both know I’m not walking away from this.”

"Probably not.” Miranda presses down on the bullet wound in Sina’s shoulder and the asari winces with pain. “But I can make it remarkably unpleasant first if you don’t cooperate.”

"Try. Guarantee…”, she coughs, blood spewing out of her mouth, “Guarantee I’ve had worse.”

"And what? The galaxy owed you for that?” The gun is in Miranda’s hand, her finger hovering over the trigger, quivering with rage. She’s never wanted to kill anyone this badly, not even her father. “So you murdered my sister so you could stay in fancy hotels and fuck cheap whores to make up for your pain.”

"Not cheap…” She laughs, more blood coming up. “You should try her.”

The words are those of a hedonist, but as Miranda looks into the asari’s dark eyes, she sees nothing behind them: no real desire, no joy, no fear of death even, because there’s nothing she loves enough to miss. Her trigger finger twitches and Miranda wonders if pulling it would be a punishment for this woman or simply a mercy. It’s not a question she has long to contemplate however, because just then, the wall behind them explodes.


	18. Sudden Stops

“Can’t you drive any faster?”

Jack’s foot taps impatiently against the back of Shepard’s seat, while next to her in the skycar, Liara raises an eyebrow with amusement at the ex-convict’s question. “I would imagine that’s not something you hear particularly often.”

"Very funny you two,” Ashara gripes good-naturedly. “Maybe one of you has taken N-6 advanced vehicular training and would like to take over instead.” There’s a brief silence and Shepard continues. “No? Good.” In truth, she’s nearly as impatient as Jack to reach the Star of Ilium before there’s a further tragedy, but crashing the car isn’t going to do anyone any good. The rental, she notes regretfully, can’t exactly shake off collisions like a Mako, and the skies of Nos Astra are quite busy in the middle of the afternoon.

Jack has to know that too, and yet logic has little power over the frustration that Ashara can practically feel radiating off of the ex-convict. It’s easy for Shepard to sympathize with her fear. She still remembers her own flight through this city years earlier, racing to the Dracon Trade Office to meet up with Liara only to see it explode just as she arrived. Few moments in the war had left her more frightened and the rage she had unleashed on the horde of Shadow Broker mercenaries invading the burnt-out building had been something to behold. She’ll always be grateful that her beloved asari turned out to be all right and she’s determined that one day Jack will be able to say the same.

           

With a sharp stop, the car pulls up in front of the Star of Ilium and Jack leaps out ahead of Shepard and Liara, cursing to herself. Why did Miranda have to be so fucking stupid, running off by herself like this? Isn’t it Jack’s job to be the impulsive one? Miranda’s supposed to be more responsible. Really, if one of them doesn’t act like an adult, this is never going to work.

She’s halfway to the hotel door when she sees the flash. 80 floors above her, the wall of the penthouse explodes and Jack freezes for an instant, her body tensing up in fear, but amid the roar and the flame, she picks out two humanoid shapes falling fast. The biotic can’t tell who they are, but if she doesn’t do something fast, they’re going to splatter on the pavement. Stopping that much momentum at this distance isn’t easy, but Jack’s got nothing if not power to burn. Gritting her teeth, she reaches out, wrapping her biotics around the two figures. Her head throbs with the exertion but the two start to slow.

Even as the bodies approach the ground, Jack feels the pressure of controlling them begin to ease, Shepard and Liara joining her with their own biotics, and she’s able to spare the attention to look closely at the two hovering shapes. One is a dark-skinned asari but the other is Miranda Lawson. Jack’s girlfriend doesn’t exactly look good, blood on her face, her clothes frayed from the fire, but as she descends gently towards the ground, the biotic can see that she’s alive.

The same can’t be said of the asari. The back of her head and much of her body seems to have been shredded by the bomb. Jack doesn’t care about that, though. Once Miranda touches down, the ex-convict runs over to her, wrapping the taller woman in her arms. She’s unconscious but breathing steadily, her barriers seeming to have shielded her from the worst of the explosion, and the ex-convict breathes a sigh of relief. “Fuck you, cheerleader,” she mumbles as she kisses her sooty forehead, “You think you’re getting away that easily? No fucking way.”

 

While Jack races over to Miranda, Shepard examines the asari. Her body was pretty badly mangled by the explosion but Ashara can still tell that it’s Sina Theramasus. For a moment, she’s relieved that this seems to be over, but only a moment. If the assassin is dead, she realizes, than who detonated the bomb and where are they now? It could have been a final, suicidal gesture, but she wouldn’t bet their lives on it and Ashara looks up from the corpse, her trained eye scanning the scene for more trouble.

“Jack! Sniper!” Shepard sees the flash of light from the rifle sight on Miranda an instant before the shot comes. The convict reacts with lightning speed, hurling up a massive biotic barrier and the sniper round impacts fruitlessly against it.

“Shit, Shepard,” Jack yells. “How many fucking people want to kill my girl?”

“Apparently a few more,” the former Spectre deadpans. She motions to her wife, “Come on, Liara, you’re with me. Jack, you get Miranda out of harms way.” She knows the biotic won’t want to leave her lover anyway, and she’s got the most raw power out of the three of them, making her a good choice to shield Miranda while Shepard and Liara go and run down the sniper. Based on the angle of the targeting beam, she’s got an idea of where the shot came from and she has no intention of letting this idiot get away.

 

Kervak Vorn folds up his sniper rifle, cursing under his breath as he prepares to leave. Spirits but he hates this job sometimes. As the last scion of a once-prosperous family nearly wiped out during the Reaper War, this use of his particular skills was the only path he could see to restoring the family fortunes. Still, these jobs have a dreadful tendency to turn into a mess no matter how much planning he puts into them.

In theory, this had been a good one. Once his contacts in the Nos Astra police department had tipped him off about the death of Miranda’s sister, he realized that he didn’t need to find his target, just track down Sina Theramasus. He’d slipped into her suite when she was out, planted some explosives in the wall, and waited for Lawson to turn up to get her revenge. It should have made for a nice, clean kill that would have left him with more than enough time to get safely off-world before anyone even learned about his involvement.

Now, his target has been plucked out of the sky, his shot’s been blocked, and what he’s pretty sure is Commander Shepard and her wife are headed in his direction. Commander Fucking Shepard! Taking out her friend was risky enough but no amount of money is worth going toe to toe with the best soldier in the galaxy.

No, in this business, even more than most, you have to know when to cut your losses. Kervak finishes stowing his gear and heads out the door of his rented office. Once he’s in the elevator, the turian sends a command from his omni-tool to the bomb he left behind in the room. The distraction should help him escape, and in any event, it’s better to leave no evidence.

 

“Are you sure this is the building?”

In response to the question, Ashara looks back and forth between her wife and the office building in front of them. With its steady stream of asari, salarians, and volus in business garb going in and out, it certainly doesn’t look like the sort of place that would be hosting assassins. Still, while it may not be easy to gauge ballistic trajectories on the fly, the she’s got plenty of experience tracking down snipers. “I think so,” she replies, “I mean, it’s not like any of the other buildings around here look more like…”

She’s cut off abruptly as above them, one of the offices with a view of the Star of Ilium explodes, shards of window glass and debris raining down onto the street. “I suppose that answers my question,” Liara says wryly, raising a barrier to shield them from the debris as the two bondmates make their way into the building.

Unfortunately, once they get inside, they’re swarmed by a sea of frightened civilians trying to flee the explosion, jostling them and blocking their view of the lobby. “Goddess,” Liara complains as she’s nearly bowled over by a panicked salarian. “How are we going to find an assassin we have never seen in this crowd?”

“By instinct.” Liara gives Ashara a quizzical look and the human adds, “His.” Reaching into her belt, she pulls out her Paladin and fires a shot into the ceiling. Virtually everyone else drops to the ground or dives away from the former Spectre, but near the back of the room, a turian wearing a dark blue suit and a large backpack has a different reaction, drawing a pistol of his own and pointing it at the two of them.

Shepard locks eyes with him and the turian realizes his mistake but it’s too late to hide his identity. He fires two quick shots in their direction but Ashara’s barriers deflect them and he spins around and dashes into the stairwell that leads to the garage.

Ashara turns to her bondmate. “He’s probably trying to get a car. I’ll go after him; you cut off the garage exit.”

“Of course, commander,” the asari replies with a smile, “I wouldn’t want us to have another car chase through this city after all.”

Rolling her eyes, Shepard breaks after the turian, vaulting over a prone asari and weaving her way around a hysterical volus. Throwing open the door to the stairwell, she sees the turian two flights down. He doesn’t repeat his mistake of reacting to her presence and though she throws a biotic blast after him, it impacts harmlessly on a metal wall.

When she reaches the bottom of the stairs, Ashara scans the garage for her quarry. At first she neither sees nor hears anything. There’s a lot of places to hide down here, and she starts checking them one by one. “I’d really have to advise you to come out now and surrender,” she calls out to the turian as she looks behind a row of parked cars. “I get that’s not the easiest thing to do when you’re still armed, but do you really think you can take me?”

For a few seconds, there’s no reply, no sound in the garage but her own footsteps on the stone floor. Suddenly, though, a flash of movement from her left side provides a clue and as she runs towards it, her answer comes in the form of small metal object hurled from behind a grey skycar. Shepard hurls herself behind a structural support, the pillar complementing her own barriers. The grenade does no more than shake her, but it appears the turian half-took her advice about fighting. He’s just trying to cover his escape, and when she emerges from her cover, he’s in the car, accelerating towards the exit to the garage.

“Liara,” she yells into her omni-tool, “He’s headed towards you. Grey sky-car, recent model.”

“Acknowledged, Shepard.”

Ashara sprints after the car, knowing she can’t catch it on her own but wanting to be there when he bondmate makes her move. She rounds a couple of corners and when she hits the final straightaway before the exit, she doesn’t see any sign of the asari.

“Honey…”   There’s a slight edge in her voice now. “He’s almost outside.”

“I am aware.” Liara doesn’t sound concerned and Ashara decides to have faith in her wife. Nor is it misplaced. Seconds before the skycar can clear the building, a security barrier springs into existence in front of the exit, too close for him to evade, and the assassin crashes head-on into it, his car ricocheting backwards as it spins out of control.

It finally skids to a stop about thirty feet ahead of Shepard and the door springs open. The turian staggers out, firing his pistol in her direction, but, dazed from the crash, his shots are easily evaded. She returns the favor with a biotic shock-wave that sends him hurling backwards into the wreckage of his car and knocking his pistol out of his hand. Before he can recover, she’s closed the distance, biotic energy covering her fist. He tries to block her strike but she’s too quick and a solid blow to his midsection takes what’s left of the fight out of him, leaving him slumped down on the hard floor.

Ashara shakes her head. “I did warn you,” she says as she holsters her pistol. Her wife emerges from the security booth at the entrance to the garage and Shepard turns to the asari. “Now we have to wait for this idiot to come back around before we can find out who hired him.”

“Aren’t you going to thank me for blocking his escape?”, Liara asks with a grin.

“Hey,” Ashara replies playfully, planting a quick kiss on her wife, “From you, I expect nothing but the best.”


	19. Questions

Ashara looks down at the defeated assassin with a certain degree of annoyance. “I was starting to think you’d never wake up.”

The turian blinks, in obvious discomfort but still defiant. “So sorry to keep you waiting.”

Shepard shrugs. “It’s not the end of the world. In case you’re wondering about the cuffs by the way, one of the police officers was nice enough to give them to me before she left.” The commander may not appreciate the paparazzi, but the cooperation she gets despite being technically retired as a Spectre is a definite upside to being considered the “Savior of the Galaxy.”

The turian says nothing and she continues, “Besides, your little nap gave us a chance to do some checking up on you. This,” she says, holding up an ID card, “Was obviously fake, but fortunately Liara is pretty resourceful.”

Her bondmate joins her, standing above the bound turian. “Kervak Vorn,” she says coolly, glancing at the information on her omni-tool. “Late of the 12th Platoon of the 53rd Palaven Infantry Division. An expert in reconnaissance and demolitions with a number of commendations stemming both from the Reaper War and earlier conflicts.”

"Quite a fall from grace, working as a hired killer,” Shepard comments.

The assassin’s eyes narrow, a strange mix of shame and anger burning behind them. “My family’s fortunes were nearly extinguished in the war. Someone had to rebuild them. Not all of us can live off of action figure sales.”

"Hey,” Ashara objects, “There’s vid royalties too.” To say nothing of Liara’s family money and leftover Shadow Broker funds, though she’s not bringing those up right now. “Listen, Kervak,” she says more harshly, her patience with assassins pretty much exhausted at this point, “You’re going to tell us who hired you. Then, you’re going to confess to the police, shut up, and do your time without making any more trouble.”

"And if not?”, he sneers. “”Is the great Commander Shepard planning on torturing me?”

"No. But consider this. If you don’t do what I tell you to, I’m going to get in touch with Primarch Victus and he’s going to open an investigation into where the money to rebuild your family’s fortune came from. They’ll be ruined. Your name will be disgraced. Everything you’ve done will have been for nothing.” She pauses to let the threat sink in. “Or, if you cooperate, you can do your time as,” she looks at the fake ID, “Galon Juni, and no one needs to know the details.”

The turian looks away, and Ashara can tell she has him. “Fine,” he snarls, “But you may not like my answers. I spoke with the client, but the call was anonymized. I don’t know his name, or even if it is a him. For all I know, you could’ve hired me.”

Liara raises an eyebrow. “I very much doubt,” she says, “That you would have taken this job on behalf of an anonymous voice.”

Kervak shakes his head. “Of course not. The contract was arranged by Pineas Kroll but I doubt he’ll tell you anything.”

Shepard’s wife turns to her. “I know that name. He is a volus operating out of the Terminus systems infamous for acting as a middleman for such deals as well as for his discretion.

"Well, I’m sure we’ll think of something. Now, come on. Let’s go find Jack and Miranda so this guy can start his vacation in the glamorous Ilium prison system.”

 

Miranda’s eyes fall open and though her ears are still ringing too much to hear what the woman cradling her head is saying, she can guess at the tone of it. There are hints of tears in Jack’s big, brown eyes and she keeps stroking the operative’s face.

"Fuck…”, Miranda manages to make out through the reverberations, “…Can’t do that to me, Miri…”

The operative blinks, trying to clear her head, and the last few minutes come flooding back. She was interrogating the justicar, there was a flash of heat, she threw up her barriers… After that though, it gets fuzzy. “What…” she murmurs, “What happened?”

"What happened?” A tear falls from the biotic’s eye. “You ran off like a fucking idiot and you almost died. I had to pull you out of the goddamn sky.”

Looking into Jack’s face, Miranda can see just how scared her girlfriend is. She’s covering it with anger and profanity like she usually does, but beneath them, Miranda knows her too well not to see the terror and it breaks something in her. She reaches up and grabs desperately onto Jack, her tears wetting her lover’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs, “I didn’t mean to do that… I don’t know what to do about any of this…”

 

As Miranda comes unraveled in her arms, Jack can’t figure out what to say. She’s been focusing on her fear for her lover’s safety, along with her anger at the operative for shutting her out and putting herself in harm’s way. Now, she has to face the reality of Miranda’s emotional devastation and she’s not sure how to deal with it. Miranda’s always been the stable one in their relationship. As much as Jack hates to admit it even to herself, the operative has been the one to pull her back down to earth when she starts acting crazy and Jack’s not sure how to reverse their roles.

At yet, she has to try. It’s breaking her heart to see Miranda this way and so she tries to remember the advice Liara gave her. The biotic wraps her arms tighter around Miranda and just lets her cry. If she doesn’t know what to say, at least she can be there.

After a few minutes, Miranda stops shaking and sits up, wiping the blood and tears off of her face. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she says again. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. To you… to me… God, to Oriana.” Fresh tears come back to her face at the mention of her sister’s name and this time Jack brushes them away.

"I know,” Jack says gently. “You loved her.”

Miranda shrugs sadly. “I barely knew her. I saw her three times a bloody year and all I did was drag her into the madness of my life again and again until… God, until it finally…”

She starts to cry again and the biotic runs her hand through her lover’s frizzled hair. “That’s not true. You saved her from that sick fuck you called a father. I wish I’d had a big sister like you.”

"And if I hadn’t taken her, she might still be alive. Who’d trust my damn judgment about these things anyway? I mean, I was the one who thought it was a good idea to work for Cerberus. Could this have been one of them? Or someone I hurt when I worked for them?” She shakes her head. “Which of my bloody mistakes got my sister killed?” Suddenly, she notices the body of the justicar lying down the street. “Is she…”

Jack nods, relieved in a way by the change of topic. The urge for revenge is something she knows how to deal with. “Yeah, the bitch is dead.”

"Who? How?”

"Not sure. Somebody blew you two up. Shepard and Blue are chasing after them now.”

From down the street, Jack hears the sound of sirens and moments later, a short asari with dark blue skin in a police uniform walks up to them. “Miranda Lawson?”, she asks. “Commander Shepard told me to make sure you were all right. The paramedics will be here momentarily.”

The operative shakes her head. “I’ll be fine.”

Jack rolls her eyes. “Babe, you probably got like six concussions. You’re going to the hospital if I have to drag you there in a biotic field myself.”

 

Fortunately, it hadn’t come to that. Indeed, Miranda had collapsed pretty much as soon as the paramedics put her on the gurney, leaving Jack to pace outside of her hospital room when Shepard and Liara arrive.

“How is she?”, the commander asks.

Jack shrugs. “I’m not sure. Pretty rough, but physically okay I guess. She’s sleeping now.”

Shepard reaches out and hugs her. “You did good, Jack.”

The ex-convict turns her head, slightly uncomfortable at being praised. “I don’t know…”

"She’s alive thanks to you,” the commander insists. “That’s doing good.”

Damn it, that stupid girl scout always seems to know how to get Jack to believe her. “Fuck it, it’ll do for now. What about you two? You find the son of a bitch that tried to blow up my girl?”

Liara puts a hand on her shoulder. “We did. It was a turian assassin named Kervak Vorn. The police have him now.”

"The police?” Jack pulls back from her friends. “Fuck that! We need to know who hired that asshole.”

"Do not worry,” Liara reassures her. “We got him to talk first. He gave us the name of middle-man who arranged the contact. It was a volus named Pineas Kroll.”

"Good.” Jack’s eyes narrow with anger. “Then we find that little troll and beat the bastard’s name out of him.” She definitely wouldn’t mind hitting something right now.

"He’s not on Ilium,” the asari informs her, “And in any event, he will not talk easily.”

"Oh, he’ll fucking talk,” Jack growls. Pain is something she knows a lot about.

Shepard laughs. “Much as I appreciate your can-do spirit, I think in this case there may be an easier way. A guy like this will keep records and fortunately, I know an expert at retrieving them.”

 

Kasumi Goto stretches out on her couch with a satisfied sigh. Another day, another successful score. That asari matriarch has plenty of necklaces anyway; she won’t really miss this one, not even if it is a particularly valuable antiquity. She does love this galaxy sometimes: it has so many pretty things and so many people who aren’t very careful about securing them.

Pouring herself a celebratory drink, she opens up her omni-tool and starts flipping through the messages. She plans on taking a little vacation after this job, but it’s never too early to start thinking about the next one.

Plans for a new drive core… A turian bust first stolen by the salarians decades ago… Urdnot Wrex’s shotgun… Councilor Tevos’ panties… Man, people want her to steal the weirdest things sometimes.

She pauses when she comes across the message from Shepard. What does her old commander want with her? Though she suspects she may regret it, she opens up a connection and within seconds, a hologram of Shepard’s blonde head flickers into existence in front of her.

“Hey, Shep, you called?”

“Kasumi. It’s been a while.”

“Doesn’t feel that way to me. Did you know _Galactic Beat_ says you’re having an affair with Tali?”

“Don’t remind me. Next thing you know they’ll be claiming I slept with Javik.” Shepard shakes her head. “Anyway, I need a favor.”

Beneath her hood, Kasumi rolls her eyes. “I suspected as much.”

"Come on,” the commander protests, “You owe me one. I did take care of the people who tried to kidnap you without getting you any more involved than you already were.”

"Oh, they probably just wanted to use me to get at you anyway.”

"Well, whatever the case” Shepard continues, “I know how much you hate those pitched battles, so don’t worry, this isn’t that.”

The thief’s mood brightens. She may protest, but the commander is one of the few people she really trusts. “What do you need?”

"Just for you to do what you do best. I need some files stolen. Paranoid guy, probably lots of security.”

A smile spreads across Kasumi’s face. This just might be fun after all.


	20. Baggage

Miranda’s dark eyes blink open and the first thing she sees is Shepard sitting in the chair next to her hospital bed, a relieved smile on her former commander’s face. “Hey, there,” Shepard says warmly, “Welcome back.”

“Shepard.” The operative groans, turning her head back and forth, glad that despite the throbbing in her head, everything still functions correctly. “Where is everyone else?”

“Well, Liara went off to scare us up something that doesn’t taste like paste and I made Jack take a nap. You’ve been out of it for about a day and a half and she’s been driving herself nuts waiting for you to wake up. She was worried about you. We all were.”

Miranda sighs. “Clearly, I should not have tried to take out that Justicar on my own. Yet another poor decision to add to my list.”

“Hey.” Shepard leans over and rubs the operative’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It was a close call but the only one who ended up dead at the hotel was Sina.” She laughs. “They did pull a pretty frightened asari call girl out of the wreckage of the suite, but she’ll live.”

“I see.” Miranda had nearly forgotten about the girl in all the confusion, but she’s glad her recklessness didn’t cost the asari her life. “That’s something I suppose. And the person who hired the assassin? What do we have there?”

“So, the Justicar’s hotel room was bombed by a turian. Liara and I caught up with him and he gave us the name of the volus middle-man who set up the contract on you.”

Her dark eyes harden. “We have to find him.”

The commander smiles. “Jack said pretty much the exact same thing. Don’t worry. I already put Kasumi on it. She’ll get his client files.”

Miranda nods. There’s no one better than the thief at that sort of work. “I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait then.”

Shepard chuckles, “I sympathize. I don’t enjoy it any more than you do.”

The operative shakes her head. “Usually, I don’t mind waiting. Right now though, I’m not particularly interested in being alone with my thoughts.”

“I know,” Shepard answers quietly and Miranda can hear the echoes of old hurts in the commander’s voice.

Miranda runs her fingers through dark hair that’s seen better days. “How did you do it, Shepard?, she asks softly. “I read every available document about you for the Lazarus Project. The psychiatric reports written after the Alliance rescued you from Mindoir said that you had an unusual resilience to stress and trauma, but I suppose I never fully understood what that meant. Unlike you, I’d never lost anything that really mattered to me. No mother, a father I despised, few real friends… But you, you had a good family, parents who loved you, sisters, friends… How did you go on without them?”

She trembles slightly as she asks the question, and Shepard takes her pale hand in her own. “An unusual resilience?”, she replies. “I suppose so. You don’t make N-7 without mental toughness.” Or save the galaxy, Miranda thinks to herself. “But it was still a slow process. The first few months after the batarian attack, I was a wreck. Empty. I didn’t want to go to school, to work, or to do pretty much anything else. But day by day, it got better. At first, the loss was all I could think about, but over time, that pain got less and even though I’ll never forget the people I lost, one day, I woke up and realized I was actually enjoying life again.”

“And until that day comes, what do I do?”

“Stay alive. Keep busy. And let the people who care about you help.”

“What about revenge?” The justicar might be dead, but Miranda can still feel a rage in her heart, the burning conviction that the monster behind this has to pay for what they did. “Did it help you to make peace with what happened?”

“It did a little bit, I suppose.” Shepard pauses. “You know, years later, I got a hold of the Alliance files on the batarian raid and tried to figure out what happened to the bastards. Some of them I probably helped kill at Elysium. Others the turians got in a sweep through the Terminus systems back in 2175. The rest… I don’t know what happened to them. Some might still be alive. More likely, the Reapers killed them.” She shakes her head. “It’s not enough in the end though. Revenge. When the Hegemony was destroyed, it didn’t bring back my family or my friends. You have to have more than that to live for.”

“I see.” Miranda takes a drink of water from the glass by her bedside. “You’re probably right. Doesn’t mean I don’t need it though.”

The commander nods. “I won’t try to stop you. When Kasumi gets the name, you can do what you want with it. It’s not like whoever did this doesn’t have it coming. Just remember that it won’t fix things.”

 

“How’s she doing?”, Jack asks, looking anxiously at her old commander as Shepard exits Miranda’s hospital room.

“Decently well, all things considered, but Jack, you have to know that this is going to be a long process. Things aren’t getting back to normal overnight.”

She shrugs. “You said that before. Screw it. I wouldn’t know normal if it fucked me in the ass.”

Shepard chuckles at that and Jack walks past her and into Miranda’s room. Her girlfriend is sitting up in bed, a wane smile on her beautiful face. “Jack. I heard you’ve been waiting up for me.”

Without saying a word, Jack grabs her girlfriend’s head in her hands and kisses the operative hard. Miranda responds to her affections, starting to open up the kiss, but a second later, the biotic pulls back and grabs her girlfriend hard by the shoulders and shakes her. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she insists.

“Jack, I…”

“Never,” she repeats. “I’m not some goddamn child, Miranda. You need to kill somebody, you bring me with you.”

That manages to bring a real smile to the operative’s face. “All right. You’ve made your point.”

“Good, because I’ve put way too much time into your tight ass for you to go and die on me now.” She means to say it nonchalantly, but the thought of Miranda dying puts a little hitch in her voice that her girlfriend notices.

“I’m sorry, Jack. I just couldn’t think straight after what happened. All that kept going through my head was guilt and the need for revenge. That and the fear that something would happen to you as well. You’re all I have left.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” she protests. “You’ve got friends. Shep and Blue have been right here too.”

“I know that, but it’s different with you. I love you, Jack.” She reaches up and plants a gentle kiss on the ex-convict’s lips. “There’s no one else I’ve felt this strongly about except…”

“Listen, about that.” Jack hesitates. This is the part she’s no damn good at, but she needs to say something. “I’m sorry, Miranda. About Ori. I know she…”

Miranda holds up a hand to stop her, her voice shaking. “I appreciate it, but I can’t talk about her right now, Jack. I think I’ll collapse if I do, and I have a score to settle first.”

 

With a few deft motions, Kasumi Goto disables the infra-red sensors that cover the air duct and sticks her head out into Pineas Kroll’s office. The volus has the room rigged so that he doesn’t need to wear his suit inside it, leaving the thief needing to use a breather to deal with the ammonia-based atmosphere the alien prefers. On the upside, the little criminal is currently distracted, yelling over his terminal at some unseen turian.

“Incorrect, Palaven-clan. You cannot claim the bounty without proof of death. Her yacht exploded, yes, but without confirmation she was on it, the client will not pay.” It’s strange hearing the volus talk without the characteristic hiss of his breathing apparatus, but Kasumi puts her fascination aside, focusing on the job at hand.

When Kroll is distracted by the turian’s counter-argument, the thief activates her tactical cloak and drops down out of the air vent. Landing in a silently crouch at the back of the room, she rolls to her feet and slinks up to the bank of computers lined up across the office. Inserting an OSD into an open port, she activates the cracking program to gain access to the client files stored on the volus’ system. As Kroll and the turian continue their argument, she slips behind the computers to make sure that her heat shimmer doesn’t give her away while the files download. A sly little smile crosses the master thief’s face as she looks around the room for anything else worth stealing. This is almost too easy to be fun. Almost.

 

“So, Edric Turner, huh?” Jack shakes her head. “Some asshole that used to work for Miranda’s dad is behind this?”

Across the comm link, Kasumi smiles that enigmatic smile that barely peeks out from behind her hood. “That’s what the files say. This volus kept pretty detailed records on his clients. Names, dates, locations; I’ll send over the details now.”

Shepard smiles back at the thief. “I appreciate the help. We all do.”

“A two-stage locking mechanism, a few sensors, and a couple of lazy batarian guards; hardly worth mentioning. But,” she adds, “You could let me have a crack at a few of the juicier names on this list before turning it over to the authorities.”

“Deal.” Shepard laughs. “Don’t ever change, Kasumi.”

The thief gives her trademark salute and signs off, leaving Miranda to comment on the news she brought. “Edric Turner. It’s definitely possible. He always was a vindictive little bastard. I remember he and my father once bought a company and fired half the employees just because their CEO insulted them at a charity function.”

The operative checks her omni-tool. “According to Kasumi’s data, he’s living on Sanctum out in the Terminus systems. He probably relocated there after the war to avoid questions about his connection with Henry Lawson.” Miranda smiles. “The planet’s relatively underdeveloped, which should cut down on interference from local authorities when Jack and I go and get her.”

“Just you two?”, Shepard asks. “Are you sure about that?”

“I am. I’ve kept you and Liara away from home long enough. You have a daughter and work you should be getting back to.”

“I know,” Shepard concedes, “But if you need me, I’m with you.”

“You’re a good friend, Shepard. Probably better than I deserve. I appreciate everything you did for me, but Jack and I can handle things from here on out.”

Jack snorts. “Yeah, Shep. It’s not like the cheerleader and I don’t have plenty of experience dealing with assholes.”

“All right,” the commander agrees. “It’s not like I don’t miss Moira. But if you two need anything, call me.”

Liara smiles at her wife. “It is just as well anyway. Aethyta has probably taught our daughter enough new words we will need her to forget already.”

“Shit, Blue,” Jack laughs, “You should encourage her to pick up a few of them. If somebody taught you some more swears, maybe you wouldn’t have to say ‘By the Goddess’ all the time.”

The asari rolls her eyes. “Very funny, Jack.” She leans over closer to the biotic and whispers, “Keep her alive or else I will be very annoyed.”

A little while and a few hugs later, Jack and Miranda are heading out of the hospital on their way to the spaceport while Shepard and Liara go to check out of their hotel. As they walk, Jack turns to her girlfriend. “So, babe,” she asks, “What’s the real reason?”

“What real reason, Jack?”

“The real reason you sent those two home. Don’t tell me it’s just that ‘you should go see your kid,’ crap.”

Miranda raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think I felt bad about keeping them from their home?”

“Sure, maybe, but I know you pretty well. There’s more to it then that.”

The operative sighs. “You’re right. Shepard and Liara, they’re heroes. I couldn’t ask for better friends, but they might not be up for what’s going to happen next. This will probably get ugly.” She runs her hand through Jack’s short hair. “I assume that’s not a problem.”

Jack shakes her head. “Ugly, I can deal with. Let’s go get this bastard.”


	21. Destinations

When Shepard opens the door, she’s nearly bowled over by the little asari crashing into her legs. “Daddy! You’re home!”

Dropping her bags, Ashara scoops her daughter up into her arms for a hug. “That’s right, my little blueberry,” she beams, kissing Moira on the cheek. “And your mom will be here too once she parks the car.”

"Did you get done helping Aunt Miranda?”, Moira asks with all the conviction of a child certain that her parents can fix everything.

"I think so,” Ashara replies, while inwardly, she’s thinking, “I hope so.” They may have saved the operative’s life, but the rest is going to be up to her and Jack. “Now, where’s your grandma?”

The asari that walks into the room in response to Shepard’s question is not, however, Aethyta. “Elphi?” the commander asks, surprised to see the instructor here.

"Hi, Shepard,” she replies brightly. “Welcome back.”

Ashara sets her daughter down. “Thanks, but I was expecting Aethyta to be here.”

"Oh, right,” the purple-skinned asari informs her, “She asked Javik and I to baby-sit Moira while she ran some errands. She said you wouldn’t mind.”

Emerging from the staircase, Liara rolls her eyes. “I will have to have a talk with my father about her taking such liberties.” She reaches down to hug Moira, kissing the top of her head. “But it is all right. Did you have a nice time with Elphi and Javik, dear?”

"Javik’s grouchy,” the little asari replies, “But he’s funny too.”

"That’s just about right, Moira,” Shepard laughs, patting her daughter’s head proudly. It’s as succinct a summary of the prothean’s personality as she’s heard, anyway.

The alien in question appears as if summoned, joining them in the living room. It’s taken Ashara a while to get used to him wearing anything but his trademark armor and even now, the sight of the prothean in a pair of slacks and a dark red shirt is a bit odd. “Do not worry, Doctor,” he says to her bondmate, “Your offspring is perfectly pleasant to be around although I did have to inform her that protheans do not play with coloring books.”

"Or at least this one doesn’t,” Elphi laughs, rubbing his shoulder. “It’s okay though. He has other talents.”

"Thank you,” Javik says, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I am glad to hear your mission went adequately well, commander. If there is nothing else however, I believe we should be leaving.”

Ashara raises an eyebrow with amusement. Good old Javik, sociable as always. “Sure thing. Come on,” she tells her daughter. “Say goodbye to these nice people, and then I can help you with your coloring book and maybe tell you about how your mom and I first met Javik.”

"Okay,” Moira says, hugging Ashara’s leg.

Liara kisses her wife warmly on the cheek. “I think someone missed her father, Go on, you two. I will see our guests out and join you in a moment.”

She’s not the only one who missed somebody, Shepard thinks as she walks with her daughter to the kitchen. Beside her, Moira is launching into a detailed explanation of a group of asari called the Maidens of the Golden Sword who are apparently the subject of her coloring book and Shepard smiles happily at her enthusiasm. It’s good to be home.

 

As Elphi’s skycar pulls away from the Shepard-T’Soni estate, Javik turns to his lover. “For a being who has lived for over a thousand years,” he observes, “It seems that Aethyta has a remarkably poor grasp of social conventions.”

"Oh, I think she understands the rules,” Elphi replies with a laugh, “She’s just too old and cranky to care very much about them. As opposed to you,” she adds, “Who can’t be bothered to pick them up in the first place.”           

"I am doing my best to learn the customs of this cycle,” the prothean says defensively, “Even if they seem strange to me. For example, I have noticed that Shepard is remarkably devoted to the child Moira in spite of the fact that she is not really her daughter.”

Without warning, Elphi takes one hand off of the steering wheel and delivers a sharp shove to his shoulder. “I do not see what that was for,” he protests. “I merely made an observation about the commander’s unusual behavior.”

"Okay, first of all,” Elphi explains, an exasperated edge in her voice, “You’re just lucky you didn’t say that garbage in front of Shepard or else I’d still be picking pieces of your thick, grey skull out of the wall. Secondly, Moira is totally her daughter. Why would you even say otherwise?”

"Shepard is human,” he says slowly, as if speaking to someone very simple. “The child is wholly asari. It seems obvious to me that she is not the commander’s daughter.”

Elphi rolls her eyes at Javik. “You can be so dense sometimes, honey. Sure, Moira’s an asari, but she’s also the product of the unique DNA that Liara mapped from her. If Liara had conceived that baby with anybody else, than she would have come out differently. Moira might not be biologically human, but she’s Shepard’s.” Elphi pauses, letting her point sink in, before adding, “And even if the biology was different, dumb ass, Shepard’s been raising her since the day she was born. That’s her kid.”

Javik says nothing at first, but as the car speeds through the darkness of the Thessian night, his thoughts remain with what his lover said. In his cycle, there was no higher principle than evolution, what the protheans called the Cosmic Imperative. Every being, his people believed, had a duty to advance the survival of their own kind. For Javik, that is no longer an option. He is the last of the protheans, a relic of a bygone age whose species will end with him. Perhaps, though, his own family does not have to do the same. Perhaps there are alternatives. Reaching across the seat, he puts his hand on Elphi’s knee and smiles.

 

"God, I hate the fucking cold,” Jack gripes, pulling the hood of her parka tighter around her shivering head. “Pragia might have been a shit hole at the edge of the galaxy but at least it was warm.” As opposed to Sanctum, she thinks unhappily. The spaceport was the kind of prefab dump a growing colony puts up until they get around to building something nicer, but she misses it already, the icy winds that lash the surface of the planet enough to make her nostalgic for well, pretty much almost anyplace else. Terraforming may have made the place livable, but it’s pretty fucking far from nice.

"I would think,” her partner says dryly, “That someone who dresses like an impoverished stripper would be accustomed to a little chill.”

Miranda’s insult makes Jack feel oddly better. It’s part of their usual dynamic, and all the way from Ilium to Sanctum, it’s just one of the things that have been missing. Miranda didn’t want to fuck even once, only ate what she had to, and talked relatively little after their seeming breakthrough at the hospital. All she’ll tell Jack is that she has to finish this mission before she can deal with anything else. Jack gets that need to settle old scores, but this definitely isn’t her idea of a good time.

"Besides,” the operative adds, “These jackets will hopefully make us a little harder to recognize.” They’ve travelled under fake names, but even with the steps he took to hide his involvement, this Edric Turner has to suspect that someone might come looking for him now that his assassins have failed.

“So what now?,” Jack asks with a wry smile. “Ice skating isn’t really my thing.”

Miranda doesn’t take the bait this time. “Now, we find someplace out of the way we can use as a base of operations, and once we’re set up, we begin surveillance on our target. If our intelligence is good, Edric is holed up in his compound managing what’s left of my father’s business interests. Once we’ve figured out a plan of attack, we break in, kill the son of a bitch, and get off-world before anyone realizes he’s dead.”

“Won’t he have a shit ton of security in there?”, Jack asks. “Why not wait for him to leave?”

“We could do that, but a quiet kill at a remote house is much more likely to keep the local authorities from crawling up our asses than a firefight in the middle of the streets.”

“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”, Jack replies with a deliberate leer. “That ass of yours belongs to me.” Neither the words nor her expression get any reaction from the cheerleader and Jack curses silently to herself. Fucking shit but this is going to be a long few days.

 

As the two women leave the spaceport in their rented sky-car, their silent shadow releases his tactical cloak, his armored form shimmering back into visibility in the parking lot. His patience has been rewarded at last. After the Justicar failed to kill Lawson in the café on Ilium, Shrike knew it was a mistake to try and complete the work she started too soon. Miranda’s guard was up then, expecting more attempts on her life, and especially with Shepard and T’Soni by her side, to attack then would have been folly.

His peers who ignored that wisdom are gone now, having paid the price for their foolishness with either their freedom or their lives. Now, though, the time draws near. Lawson imagines that she is no longer the hunted but the hunter. Somewhere on this world is the unknown person who set these events in motion, the person Lawson has come here to kill. She will try to strike soon, and when she does, Shrike will be waiting and she will fall. She, and that thrice damned bitch, Jack, will both die, and that thought, as much as the money that he stands to receive for the job, keeps him warm in spite of the weather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shrike was last seen back in Chapter 11 taking this job.


	22. Breaking

The fat security guard strolls around the perimeter without a care in the world, or so it seems to Jack. Either way, he clearly hasn’t spotted her or Miranda yet, concealed as they are by the trees, the dark, and the light snow that’s falling around them. Reaching out, the ex-convict grabs the man in an biotic field and slams his large body into the wall that surrounds the two story compound. He crumples to the ground, unconscious but not, she hopes, dead. Once, she would have snapped his neck without a second thought, but she’s trying not to be so cavalier about killing anymore. Sure, Edric, has to die for what he did, but for some rent-a-gun guarding his house, a long nap will do just fine.

Quietly, the two woman creep down the snow banks and towards the fence. Stealthy isn’t usually Jack’s style, but the less warning their target has, the less chance there is for Edric to escape them. The ex-convict has already spent enough time on this ice ball to last a lifetime; there’s no way she’s going to waste more of it hunting him down. Still, a week of intelligence gathering has paid off: a little surveillance here, a few bribes to contractors there, and they’ve got a pretty good idea of what they’re up against. Miranda activates a program on her omni-tool to disable the proximity sensors around the wall, and the two of them climb up and into the yard.

Dashing across the snowy field, the biotics reach the house and while Miranda gets to work on cracking a window, Jack takes a peak inside. Her view of a lavish dining room manages to make her even more pissed off than she already was. Everything about it, from the heavy wood table to the crystal chandelier makes her think of an entitled asshole who gets to live in luxury while he fucks with the people she cares about.

Miranda gets the window open and Jack takes a certain perverse satisfaction in tracking snow all over the expensive-looking rug. The pair slinks quietly across the dining room, but they barely make it into the hallway before their cover is blown. A door to the kitchens swings open unexpectedly, revealing a maid carrying a platter of food. At the sight of the two strange women carrying pistols, she shrieks, dropping the tray. Even as the potatoes au gratin spill across the hard wood floor, Miranda is knocking the servant out with a biotic blast, but it’s too late to stop the alarm from being raised.

From both the ground floor as well as the upstairs of the house, they can hear movement and Miranda turns to her lover, a scowl covering her face. “Bloody hell,” the operative growls. “This bastard is not getting away. I’ll check down here and cover the main doors. You go upstairs and look there.”

"Are you sure?” Jack isn’t a fan of splitting up right now. She needs to keep an eye on Miranda, make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.

Her lover’s eyes are like black stones. “He is not getting away,” she repeats icily.

Jack bites her lip. This doesn’t sound like it’s open for discussion. “Fine.” The ex-convict starts to run up the stairs but first, she turns around. “Don’t die, cheerleader,” she orders her girlfriend.

Reaching the top of the grand staircase, Jack heads in the direction of the nearest footsteps, only to be met half-way down the hall by a security guard. The lanky man is another human; everyone who works for this xenophobic piece of crap is, and when he sees Jack, he opens fire with a heavy pistol. She takes the first shot on her barriers and pushes back, launching a powerful shockwave that sends him flying through the air and crashing into the wall at the end of the corridor.

Continuing her search, Jack picks a random door and opens it but all she finds is a bathroom and behind her, a second door opens. On instinct, she whirls, firing off another shockwave. A body crashes back into the door, but when Jack sees who she hit, she stops short. A chambermaid lies unconscious on the floor and Jack runs over to her, cursing under her breath. Fuck it, she didn’t mean to take out some hapless servant. Bending down, she checks the woman’s pulse and breathes a sigh of relief. She’s not dead, just out cold. The biotic must be going soft in her old age, worrying about this kind of shit. Between Shepard and the rest of the Alliance types she hangs out with, it’s a wonder she hasn’t…

Jack cries out in pain as from behind her, a hail of rifle fire rips into her barriers, knocking her off her feet and leaving her gasping for breath. Jack rolls across the floor just in time to avoid a second burst and she looks up to see Edric Turner standing down the hall holding a Harrier. A middle-aged man with a hard face and dark hair that contrasts with his bright, blue eyes, she recognizes him from the file photos even with his face contorted by rage.

"I should have known she’d bring you along,” he growls. “What better way for that whore to spit on her father’s good name than to fuck a piece of gutter trash like you.”

"Screw you,” Jack snarls, firing back with her heavy pistol. He’s got expensive shields, though, and they hold up while he ducks back into the room he ambushed her from. “What gives you the right to judge either of us? Just because you’ve got a pile of money doesn’t mean you’re not a murdering asshole.”

His rifle reloaded, Turner ducks back out into the hall, but this time, Jack’s got her breath back. Her biotics rip the door right off of its hinges, smashing into him so hard that it shatters his shields and knocks the corrupt executive to the ground. As he fall, his right hand flicks in her direction, and just in the knick of time, she sees a metal ball rolling towards her. She grabs it in a biotic field a hurls it down the hallway, the grenade exploding in a flash of heat and light that annihilates an end table but does little other harm. Before Edric can get up, Jack sprints over to the fallen man, kicking the rifle out of his hand and leveling her pistol at his head.

"Quite the fucking arsenal you’ve got there,” she observes. “I wonder why an upstanding businessman like you needs so many weapons?”

He doesn’t respond directly, his earlier arrogance replaced by fear. “Wait,” he pleads, “Don’t kill me. I can pay you. More money than someone like you has ever seen.”

"I’ll pass,” Jack laughs. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you.” For a second, relief appears on Edric’s face, but then she adds, “I’ll leave that to Miranda.” She opens a connection on her omni-tool. “Hey, babe,” she says cheerfully, “I’ve caught the bastard so get your ass up here.” There’s no answer and Jack feels her heart sink into her chest. “Miranda,” she says, trying not to sound as scared as she feels, “Come on. Talk to me. What the fuck are you doing?”

           

A few minutes earlier:

Miranda scans the entrance hall, looking for signs of her target, but the short, frightened man in a mid-priced suit who runs wildly towards her isn’t Edric Turner. Miranda grabs him by the shirt front, slamming him into a wall. “Where’s Edric,” she hisses, holding the pistol up to the side of his head.

He swallows so hard the operative is afraid he’ll choke on his fear. “I don’t know,” he blurts out, “But he was in his study. Upstairs. Second door on the left. Please let me go. I’m just an accountant.”

She tosses him towards the door. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

He flees out into the snowy evening and Miranda opens up her omni-tool to tell Jack she’s on her way. That’s when she sees it. The heat shimmer is so subtle that if she hadn’t spent months trying to keep an eye out for Kasumi Goto, even Miranda’s astute eyes probably would have missed the motion. She spins away from the de-cloaking man even as he strikes, lashing out with a monomolecular blade that slices through her barriers and parka, drawing blood from her side.   Her move keeps the sword away from her vital organs though and as she falls back, she gets a better look at her attacker. He’s big, and covered head to toe in a suit of midnight blue armor that reminds her of Garrus but he moves with impressive speed in spite of it.

Miranda fires two rounds from her pistol at the man but they barely slow him down. His shields and armor take the impact and he barrels into her, his bulk throwing her off of her feet. She crashes into the marble floor and his sword races down towards her legs even as she throws a warp blast at his armored head. That succeeds in staggering him back slightly and she plants her foot squarely into his midsection. The impact shock runs down her leg but Miranda ignores it, rolling away from her attacker.

The operative bolts towards the staircase, but as she reaches it, a series of sharp impacts pierce her barriers and shoot along her spine. Behind her, the assassin is a holding submachine gun and she spins, firing back at him. A shot breaks through his shields and catches him in the arm. He grunts in pain and anger and while he’s off-balance, Miranda leaps forward, bowling him over with the unexpected force of her attack.

She lands on top of her enemy, ramming a biotically-charged fist into his armored head, but before she can follow up, a metal fist impacts her mid-section. She gasps and as she doubles over, a second punch smashes into her face. Her nose breaks, spraying blood all over her and when she tries to roll off of him, his fist finds her head again. Her vision starts to blur and when the next blow lands, everything goes dark.


	23. Revenge

Jack closes the omni-tool connection, the silence at the other end more frightening than almost anything she could have heard. Beneath her, the defeated executive grins. “I guess we’ll have to continue this another time. After all, you can’t keep me captive and go save that bitch at the same time.”

He does have a point. This idiot is only going to slow her down but she can’t exactly let him go either. Gritting her teeth, Jack makes a decision.

Edric’s eyes go wide as the ex-convict trains her pistol on his face, his briefly raised hopes dashed once more. “I’m sorry about this,” she whispers.

“Then don’t kill me,” he pleads.

Jack snorts. “Nah, I mean I’m sorry for Miranda. She really deserved to do this herself. You, I’m not gonna lose any sleep over.”

Without waiting to hear his reply, the biotic pulls the trigger and the front of Edric’s head turns into a bloody mess. Jack straightens up, sparing a final contemptuous, look at his corpse. It’s hard to believe that this pathetic loser has been the source of so much pain and grief for them, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Plenty of people are tough enough when they’re hiring somebody else to do their killing for them.

Fuck Edric Turner; she’s got to move. Racing through the now-empty corridors, Jack swiftly returns to where her search began and when she looks down into the entrance hall, she stops short. Lying on the marble floor, her face and parka smeared with blood, is Miranda.

“Don’t be dead,” she repeats to a galaxy she knows better than to expect any favors from. “Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.”

She reaches her lover in a few frantic bounds and lifts the operative up, putting her fingers to her neck. A second later, she exhales. Thank whatever fucking gods there are, Miranda still has a pulse. “Hey,” she whispers to the bloody woman, “Miri. It’s me.” There’s no response and Jack reaches into her coat and pulls out her medi-gel dispenser.

The device is only half-way out of her pocket when she feels the sting. It’s a quick, sharp pain to the side of her neck, and an instant later, a shock runs through her system, causing her to drop the medi-gel. She fumbles around, cursing at herself. Fuck but she’s an idiot. She should have know this was a trap, but she was too worried about Miranda to think straight. Her hand finds the source of the pain and she yanks out a small metal dart, tossing it onto the marble floor.

She mutters, “What the fuck?”, even as, in front of her, she sees her attacker de-cloaking. He’s big, armored, and definitely not a run of the mill security guard, and with her head swimming from whatever he shot her with, she decides to stall for time. Her biotics let her metabolize drugs quickly; maybe she can delay him long enough to get her bearings back.

“Listen, asshole,” she snaps, faking a bravado she doesn’t entirely feel just now, “The guy who hired you, Edric, is dead. There’s no pay day here. Lucky for you, Miranda’s still breathing so if you just back off now, we can call this one a wash.”

The man laughs as he holsters his dart gun, a flat, synthesized sound utterly devoid of real mirth. “Dead? That is a shame. I’ll have to find out if the bounty can be collected posthumously. But this was never primarily about the money. You and I have unfinished business.”

She blinks hard. There’s this buzzing in her head that she still can’t quite place or shake. “I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” Jack forces a smirk to her lips. “I’ve blown up my fair share of security mechs. You kind of sound like their cousin. Is that what this is about?”

“Not exactly.” The man unfastens his helmet and lifts it off of his head. Beneath, he’s a tan man with dark eyes and wavy black hair. What she notices most about him though are the cybernetics. Beneath his skin, angry red lines mark where the implants have marked his body It reminds her of Shepard when she first met the commander, but while she had fought to control her emotions, this guy is reveling in his anger. “You know me now?!”, he snarls.

She racks her brain. It’s hard to think straight right now but he does seem vaguely familiar. “Yeah, maybe,” she replies. “You ever play in a club on Omega called The Varren’s Tail?”

“Rodrigo Pascal!”, he screams. “The _Purgatory_!” I was a prisoner there when you blew the ship half to pieces. For three days I was trapped in the flaming wreckage. I should have died! Now, you’re gonna pay for that. I’m gonna break your fucking legs so you can lie there and watch while I kill the bitch that helped break you out and then you’re gonna die too.”

Her big, brown eyes narrow with anger. “Look, asshole. I don’t remember you, but if you remember what I did to that ship, you should think real hard about what I’m going to do if you don’t stand the fuck down.”

Pushing aside the fuzz in her brain as best she can, she tries to summon her biotics but as fast as the energy gathers around her, it dissipates. She feels herself panicking as she attempts to get a handle on the power and a horrid grin spreads across Rodrigo’s face at her distress. “That dart I shot you with?”, he gloats, “It temporarily disables the connection between a biotic and their amp. The only thing you’ll do is burn, just like I did.”

Rodrigo touches a button on his gauntlet and a fiery jet shoots out from it. Jack tries to manifest a barrier to stop the flames, but it’s weak and half-formed, the lack of access to her amp making even the most rudimentary biotic tasks nearly impossible. Even as her defenses crumble, Jack can feel her skin charring from the heat, and she dives to her left, trying to at least draw the attack away from Miranda.

The flamer’s fuel runs out a second later but before the biotic can give thanks for that, Rodrigo draws a wicked looking sword and charges, aiming the point directly at her chest. Jack reacts quickly, firing a shot from her heavy pistol into his shields and though it doesn’t stop him, it does throw him off balance enough to let her escape with a glancing cut across the arm of her jacket. He recovers fast though, swinging once more at her chest and though the biotic falls back, she doesn’t get away without taking another glancing slash, this one to her torso. She tries her biotics again, but though this time she manages to get a little force behind them, she can’t control the blast properly. Energy flies undirected out of her hands, knocking the ex-convict hard onto the floor. Rodrigo is thrown off of his feet as well, but he gets up faster, his armor having cushioned the blow. She by contrast feels naked. Without her biotics, she’s just a skinny kid again, fighting against an armored monster twice her size.

 ***

It’s the heat that wakes her up. As it washes over her, Miranda’s dark eyes open to the sight of Jack, her arms raised, straining as she tries to hold back the flames. An instant later, her lover leaps away and from behind her, Miranda can see the man who beat her pursue, his sword flashing as he strikes. She gasps, fear for the woman she loves forcing her thoughts back to coherence. Her head is ringing, one eye is swollen half-shut, and her belly aches from where she was punched, but she’s alive and she’s not giving up. A trembling hand reaches out, closing around the medi-gel tube she sees lying in front of her.

Cool relief fills her body as she injects the drug cocktail into her chest and Miranda pulls herself up to her hands and knees. In front of her, Jack is fleeing for her life, scampering just ahead of the man’s killing blade. Miranda can feel the rage swelling in her, the anger that’s been boiling beneath her skin every since Oriana died. Not this time. She’s not losing another person she loves. With a roar, she pushes past the pain and fires the strongest biotic bolt she can muster, catching the armored brute right in the back.

 ***

Jack scurries up the stairs, the sound metal on stone ringing out as Rodrigo’s blade lands just inches behind her. The next sound she hears, though, isn’t one she expects. Her attacker cries out in pain and stops short, a glowing burst lighting him up from behind. Jack doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, turning and pumping two shots from her Carnifex point blank into Rodrigo’s head. The bullets break his shields and though he twists away from her shots, the second one blows off a chunk of his face, exposing the metal underneath the skin. He howls in pain and lashes out wildly with his fist, knocking Jack down. She doesn’t let up though, kicking Rodrigo in his exposed head even as she crashes onto the stairs. He falls down the banister and as he tumbles to ground in a heap, she sees Miranda pull herself to her feet.

A biotic glow envelops the operative’s hand as she walks over to Rodrigo. He opens his mouth to say something, but as he chokes on the blood in his mouth, she cuts him off, her voice nothing but icy rage. “You should not have fucked with Jack,” she snarls before her fist descends. Rodrigo’s head explodes like an overripe melon, blood, bone, and metal splattering all over Miranda’s arm.

The light around Miranda fades, and as quickly as the operative had regained her energy, it seems to vanish once more. She staggers and Jack pushes past the pain of her own wounds, leaping down the stairs to take the operative in her arms. “It’s okay, babe,” she tells her wounded girlfriend, “I got you.”

“Edric,” Miranda wheezes through the pain, evidently unable to relax until she knows what became of the man she came here to kill. “Where is he?”

“He’s dead,” Jack says softly.

“You killed him?” Her voice is filled with a mixture of emotions Jack can’t quite decipher. “He was mine.”

The biotic nods. “I know. But I had no choice.”

“He was mine,” the operative repeats, tears now running down her face as her emotional barriers collapse.

“I had to come back for you,” she insists. “Edric would’ve gotten away.” Jack racks her brain, trying to come up with a way to explain this that her lover will accept. “I got this one for you,” she offers. “We’re supposed to be a team, right?”

Apparently, it works, because she can feel the tension Miranda’s body release as she slumps down into Jack arms. “Is it over?”, she asks weakly, exhaustion behind every syllable.

The ex-convict strokes her lover’s long, dark hair. “Yeah, cheerleader” she reassures her, “It’s over.”


	24. Scar Tissue

Jack walks out of the shower, wincing slightly as she runs her towel over the still-healing cut along her torso. It’s only been two days since they killed Edric and though the biotic’s wounds have mostly healed, the skin is still a bit tender. Across their small cabin, Miranda looks up from the room’s terminal.

"Ah good,” the operative says, “You’re finally out of there. I’m surprised a ship’s shower even had that much hot water.”

"Screw you,” Jack says, but with a smile. It’s good to see Miranda’s combative tendencies returning. “I’m still trying to get the fucking chill from that ice ball out of my system. You heard from Liara yet?”

"I have. It turns out our friend Rodrigo Pascal had quite the interesting past. Before he was an inmate aboard the _Purgatory_ , he was a member of Alliance special forces, N-5 at the time of his dishonorable discharge.”

"Dishonorable discharge?” Jack’s eyes widen with interest. “For what?”

"Torturing prisoners. Anyway, after leaving the Alliance, he went freelance, taking whatever jobs paid. He had built up quite a little reputation for carnage before being caught and locked up on the prison ship with you. After the _Purgatory_ was destroyed, he escaped before the rescuers realized who he was and went back to work, taking on the Shrike persona in order to avoid the heat for his earlier crimes.”

"What a fucking asshole.” Jack snorts. “Blaming me for what happened to him. Sounds like that guy was always a psycho.” She flips the bird at his imagined ghost.  Rot in hell, you prick.”

"There has been quite a run of revenge-crazed lunatics these past few years,” Miranda sighs. “Rodrigo. Edric. That mess at Ashley’s wedding. All the things we did; I suppose it takes a while for the echoes to fade.”

"Yeah,” Jack agrees, “And as always, Shepard found a way to one up us all.” Miranda looks at her funny and the biotic explains, “Her old enemies were hundred foot tall squids. Hard to beat that.”

"A fair point. At any event, Liara sends along her best and says she’s relieved that we’re all right.”

"Are we?”, Jack asks tentatively, “All right?” Tossing her towel on the floor, she walks up behind the sitting operative and runs her fingers through her dark hair.

"I’m not going to run off again and get myself killed if that’s what you’re worried about,” Miranda tells her.

"That’s good to hear.” She kiss the top of the operative’s head. “But that’s not exactly what I meant.”

Miranda pulls away, standing up and pacing across the room. “I don’t know about the rest, Jack. I’m not sure I’ll ever be entirely the same. Oriana meant so much to me.” The operative pauses, trying to explain what she means. “You knew me when we first started our mission against the Collectors. I used to be a very cold person, and looking out for her was pretty much the only decent thing I did back then, the only thing that kept me connected to my humanity.”

"You changed.” Jack closes the distance with Miranda, reaching out to her lover only to be rebuffed, the operative pushing her away.

"Because of Ori,” she snaps. “She was what I cared about. It was only when Shepard helped me to protect my sister that I started to trust her, to trust anybody but myself. And now Ori’s gone. Where does that leave me?”

Jack bites the inside of her lip, trying to figure out what to say next. For all the pain that she’s been through, this is something she doesn’t quite understand. What she lost, she lost before she even understood what was happening, back when Cerberus took her from whatever home she’d been born into. Still, she knows something about building a life from scratch. “I don’t know what it exactly means,” she tells Miranda. “I just know that now, you’ve got other stuff. Friends… A crazy ass girlfriend who loves you…”

"I know,” she tells Jack, but there’s bitterness in Miranda’s voice. “I can go back to my nice apartment, and my new job, and my comfortable life, and be Miranda Lawson, Hero of the Reaper War. I barely even have to notice Oriana’s dead. After all, I only saw her a few times a year anyway…”

Her words become increasingly ragged as she talks and by the time she’s done, she’s sobbing. Jack comes back over to her and at last, the operative lets herself be held. “You loved her,” the biotic assures her girlfriend as she sits her down on the bed. “You may have had your own lives but she knew that.”

“I got her killed.”

“No.” Jack is not going to let Miranda carry that. “You know I’m the first person to blame you for shit, but this isn’t your fault. This wasn’t about your career as a Cerberus cheerleader. You killed that piece of shit that passed for your father and so his dick bag of a friend sicced that Justicar on you. That’s why Ori died. It was their fault and we killed them for it.”

“Did he know?”, Miranda asked softly, burying her head in Jack’s bare chest. “Did Turner know why you killed him?”

“Yeah,” Jack assures her, “He knew who I was. Had a few choice words to say about your choice in women before he died too.”

That elicits a small smile from Miranda. “Good. It’s… it’s important that he knew.”

She nods. “He did.”

Miranda straightens up, drying her eyes. “Thank you. For that, and for helping me deal with all of this. I know that putting up with my emotional problems isn’t what you got into this relationship for and I would understand if you didn’t want to continue seeing me now that it’s over.”

The biotic chuckles. “Nah, I’m not going anywhere. Look, you talked about what I got into this for. I got into this ‘cause I liked making you squirm and I really liked fucking you.   Shit changed. This turned into something that matters. When you ditched me, I was pissed, but I didn’t want to give up on us then and I still don’t now.”

“I’m not sure what to say, Jack.”

“Just let me finish,” she replies. It’s hard enough for the ex-convict to get through the mushy stuff without interruptions and when Miranda nods, she jumps back in. “Look, I know you’re gonna have to deal with some stuff now. What else is new? The Reapers blew up half the galaxy and killed god only knows how many people. There was a lot of having to deal going around. Most people got through it, and not many of them were as tough as you. You’ll get there.”

“Jack,” Miranda says, a grateful smile covering her beautiful face, “That there may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Besides,” the biotic adds with a laugh, “I’d be crazy to leave now when you owe me a murder. Who knows when I’ll need help killing somebody?”

The operative laughs back, a least a little of the weight she’s been carrying seeming to be relieved. “Deal.” She wraps her arms around Jack’s naked body, initiating a slow kiss, and the biotic groans softly into her mouth. It’s been too long since they’ve done pretty much anything and Jack feels herself responding to the warmth of her lover. Miranda feels it too, because when she ends the kiss, she leans over and whispers, “Please, Jack. Help me to forget, just for a little while. I need…”

“I know.” The ex-convict finds the zipper on Miranda’s cat suit and peels it swiftly off of her body. There are still bruises on the skin underneath, but they don’t bother Jack. It’s always seemed right to her that the shit that you survive should leave a mark, even if , as in this case, it’s a temporary one.

She undoes Miranda’s bra and as Jack runs her hands over the operative’s big, firm breasts, her lover shudders in her arms. She’s usually responsive to Jack’s touch, but this is something different and more desperate. Her kisses are fierce and when Jack slides off her panties and enters her, Miranda throws back her head, losing herself in the pleasure. Her hips buck frantically against Jack’s hand and she cries out with each thrust, her wetness soaking the biotic’s fingers. She peaks quickly but Jack doesn’t stop. Once isn’t enough for Miranda and even when Jack’s wrist tires, her mouth replaces it, only stopping when the operative lies completely spent on the bed beneath her.

When Miranda moves to reciprocate, Jack protests that she’s all right, but her lover insists, pulling the ex-convict into her arms and lavishing kisses on her face and neck. Long slim fingers find her center, stroking her as Miranda whispers, “I love you, Jack,” again and again. It’s not what the biotic is used to, this tenderness. Even as their relationship has deepened, their sex has tended towards the animalistic, but this feels right. Miranda’s skill is undiminished, and there’s something about her focus on Jack’s pleasure that’s incredibly arousing.

She comes hard, pulsing satisfyingly around Miranda’s fingers, and afterwards the operative smiles at her. “Thank you, Jack,” she whispers. “That was… I needed it. I can’t quite explain it but...”

Jack chuckles softly, kissing her lover’s collarbone. “No need. I’ve been there. Sometimes you just have to be somewhere besides your own fucked up head.”

Miranda just nods sleepily, slumping down beneath her, and Jack smiles. That’s why they’ve got a chance. Because as messed up as both of them may be, they get each other and maybe that’ll be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that wraps up this arc. Just one more story to go and in contrast to the angst in this one, expect it be fluff heavy. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you thought of all this.


	25. Docking Preparations

“Does it feel strange; going back there after all these years?”

Ashara’s arms pull tighter around the lovely asari as she considers her question. “A little,” she decides. It’s been a long time since she last set foot on the Citadel, but it isn’t a place she’s ever forgotten and returning there has definitely stirred old memories.

"I imagine it will look rather different than the last time you were there.”

"Definitely.” Ashara nuzzles her face against the back of Liara’s crest, taking pleasure in the way the smooth silk of her negligee and the warmth of her skin feel against the commander’s body. “But it’s not just the day the war ended that I was thinking about. So much happened on that station. It’s where I met Tali, and Garrus, and Wrex. Where I became a Spectre. Fought Saren. Where Thane died.” She kisses the sensitive skin pressed against her face and the asari purrs. “And where I became your bondmate. It’ll always have a lot of different associations for me.”

Liara turns in her arms, her blue eyes meeting the former Spectre’s green ones. “I know you were ambivalent about the Council reconstructing it, but I do think it’s good that Moira will get to go there. It’s important for her to learn her family’s history.”

The commander smiles. “Spoken like a true archeologist. Though I suspect she may have to be a bit older to appreciate all of it. Not that she won’t be interested.” She strokes her bondmate’s face lovingly. “She really is her mother’s daughter, wanting to know everything about everything.”

"In some respects. She has your way with people. I was not nearly so sociable as she is when I was younger.”

"I remember,” Ashara says with a grin. “You were pretty cute, stumbling over your words those first few months on the _Normandy_.”

Liara blushes a little bit. “I was worried I would say the wrong thing and drive you off,” she explains.

"You didn’t need to worry about that,” Shepard laughs, kissing the smooth, scaled skin of her bondmate’s neck. “I had a pretty big crush.”

The asari runs her hand through the commander’s hair, tangling her fingers there. “You were not the only one. It made me nervous how much I wanted you to like me.”

"Well, fortunately Moira’s still a bit young for that problem,” she comments. “Still, it’s good she likes meeting people. Pretty much the whole gang is going to be at this ceremony.”

"You always could draw a crowd,” Liara teases her.

Ashara laughs. “Maybe they just wanted to relive old times. We’re not the only ones that made a lot of memories on the Citadel. God only knows what the rest of the crew got up to on shore leave. Vega’s just lucky he never lost a kidney in those cards games on the docks.”

"Goddess, what about Wrex?”, Liara offers. “Do you remember the way he smelled when he got back to the ship after the mission to Feros?”

"It was… interesting,” Shepard agrees. “Sort of like a mix between a distillery and a sewer, I’d say. What about Jack?” Ashara’s not sure she wants to picture what exactly the old Jack used to do for stress relief in the middle of a suicide mission, but clearly the idea is pretty funny, because Liara bursts out laughing as soon as she says the name.

"Careful,” she whispers to her bondmate, putting a finger up to her lips. “We don’t want to wake Moira.”

"Of course not,” Liara answers, choking back her laughter. “It is only… the Shadow Broker had some files on this subject.”

"Really?” Ashara asks, a sly smile now covering her face. “Do I even want to ask?”

"Many of them are what you might expect,” her bondmate informs her. “Others, though, I am less certain about. “ She gives Ashara that inquisitive look that the commander still finds irresistibly adorable. “What exactly is a poetry slam?”

 ***

There was a time when Ashara had hated to look in the mirror. The lined, weary face that had stared back at her during the final days of the Reaper War hadn’t been one she particularly enjoyed looking at. She’d had the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders, and it had showed.

Now, though, as she towels off from her shower, she feels very differently. Miranda told her she could live to be 250 or more, and what she sees in the mirror suggests the operative was right. Indeed, though it’s been more than eleven years since the Reaper War ended, in some ways Shepard looks younger than she did back then.

The worry lines and bags under her eyes are gone, and the damp blonde hair she ties back is longer than it used to be. She and Liara both like it that way and since her fighting these days is mostly limited to leading training exercises, she can afford the indulgence.

The plethora of scars that used to paint her body have been almost entirely eliminated by the implants. A few faint lines on her abdomen and leg are all that’s left of angry red marks that had so alarmed her after she woke up on the Lazarus Station. In a way that’s also true of the other, less visible wounds she’s taken. The grief at the loss of her family, the pain she felt when friends died, and the anguish over some of the choices she had to make have left their marks; it’s impossible to have experienced all of those things and come away unchanged. She knows she worries more about the people close to her than she needs to, and there are still nights when the old hurts wear on her. They’re far fewer than they used to be though, and when they come, Liara is there to hold her until the memories pass.

Mostly, though, she’s happy. Happier, Shepard thinks as she buttons up the jacket of her dress uniform, than she could’ve imagined in those days. There were moments of joy to be sure: with Liara, with the crew, and victories worth celebrating, but sooner or later, the horrors would creep back into her life. Even as she kept her faith that they could win the war, it had been hard to picture just what life would be like afterwards.

Coming back here to the Citadel sort of puts all of the changes into perspective. The station at the heart of the last battle was a symbol of all that the galaxy suffered through, but its rebirth reminds Shepard that they survived, that after everything the Reapers threw at them, life went on. Now, she just needs to figure out how she’s going to convey all of that in her speech.

Even though it’s far from the first one she’s made, she’s still a bit nervous about it. Usually when she gave a speech, it was to her crew before a battle. She always knew what to say then. There was a clear goal to focus on: stop Saren, destroy the Collectors, reach the beam.

A moment like this is harder to sum up in a few words. There’s so much that happened on the Citadel and so many people who’ll be looking to her to help make sense of it all. Still, she reminds herself as she pulls on her dress shoes that unlike the last mission she had here, the galaxy won’t end if she doesn’t get it right.

 ***

"Aren’t I lucky,” Shepard grins as she comes out of the bathroom to find her wife and daughter waiting for her.

"Why’s that, daddy?”

"Because,” the commander tells Moira, “When I go to the ceremony, I’ll be sitting with the two prettiest asari in the galaxy.”

Liara smiles back at her. Her bondmate does look especially lovely this morning, wearing an elegant purple dress and the red jeweled necklace that Ashara gave for Christmas years ago. “You’re sweet,” she tells the commander, giving her a peck on the cheek, “But before then, don’t you have to finish your speech?”

"It’s almost done.” Liara raises an eyebrow at her claim. “Well, I know what I want to say anyway. I’m just working on the words.”

"Can I help?”, Moira asks enthusiastically.

"Aw, thanks,” Shepard tells her daughter, rubbing her head, “But I think I’ll be okay.”

Liara gives Moira a cautionary look. “If you want to help your father’s speech go well, refraining from head butting anyone at the ceremony would be a good start.”

The little asari rolls her eyes at Liara. “I know that, mom.”

"Just make sure you remember it,” Shepard cautions her. “We don’t want a repeat of last month’s incident with Celia.”

Her daughter looks slightly chagrined at the reminder while Shepard gives Liara a kiss. “I’ll see you at the ceremony,” she tells the two asari. “I have to go meet with the squad now.”

 ***

Shepard is still in an excellent mood when she reaches the hanger bay of the _Time’s Progress_. The asari cruiser hasn’t docked with the Citadel yet, but Javik and her advanced students who’ve been selected to represent the asari military at the ceremony are already mustered by the time she gets there.

“Commander,” the armored prothean says, all business this morning, “All of the security arrangements are in place for our arrival. The docking bay has been cleared and swept for explosives and your route has been secured. Anyone attempting to kill you today would be foolish indeed.”

“Hey, I would have said the same thing about Ash’s wedding but you know what happened there.”

“Indeed,” the prothean agrees, “I was not expressing an opinion about the likelihood of a such an attempt, only its advisability. One should never underestimate the tendency of primitives to make poor decisions.”

“Dear.” Elphi walks up behind her bondmate, placing a hand on the prothean’s shoulder guard. “I thought we agreed to limit the ‘primitive’ talk while we’re on the Citadel. You know, for the sake of diplomacy.”

“We are not on the Citadel yet,” he deadpans.

“I suppose not,” she agrees. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt to start now. It’s hard to break old habits.”

Javik purses his thin lips. Shepard is impressed by how well Elphi has domesticated him, even if his grumpy demeanor remains intact. “Very well,” he nods. “I suppose the peoples of this cycle do deserve to celebrate today. The restoration of the Citadel as the center of galactic government is a monument to your destruction of the Reapers.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Ashara says with a shrug, “Even if that’s not quite how I’d put it. Still, I guess it’s good the Council is coming back here. It was never quite the same when it was on the Hub.”

“Speaking of meeting places, are they any closer to figuring out how to put the Citadel back where it came from?”, Elphi asks.

“It’s a bit big to tow through a Mass Relay,” the commander laughs, “And whatever internal mechanism the Reapers used to move it here has been pretty tough to get working again, so I guess for a while anyway, the Council will have to have its meetings above Earth.”

“That will certainly make it easier for your people to seize control of it if necessary,” Javik tells her, only cracking a small smile when the commander rolls her eyes at him.

“Come on, you comedians,” Ashara laughs, “Let’s get moving. Wrex gets grumpy when people are later than he his.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say this last story was going to be fluff heavy. *grin* Hope you like it so far. Also, the necklace Liara was wearing comes from the story “Thessian Christmas.”


	26. Endurance

“Admiral Williams!”

The former Spectre turns around at the sound of her old commander’s voice, stepping away from the railing that overlooks the rebuilt Presidium gardens to hug her friend. “Shepard?”, she asks, “What’re you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be meeting with the rest of the VIPs before the ceremony.”

"I was,” she agrees, “But I escaped. I needed a little break from discussing procedures and protocols.” Shepard smirks as looks Ashley’s dress uniform up and down. “Of course, in that outfit you look an awful lot like one of those VIPs.”

"Screw you, Ma’am,” Ashley replies, but she’s laughing when she says it.

"So how is it, being one of the brass instead of bitching about them?”

"Oh, I still bitch. But yeah, it’s a little strange being an admiral,” she admits. “I definitely never thought that would be me. Hell, I never thought I’d command a ship, or really get much past being a grunt slogging it out in the trenches. Really, the whole mess is probably your fault somehow.”

Ashara smiles innocently. “Well, I apologize for getting you made an admiral, however indirectly.”

"Accepted. Anyway, it may be a little dull but it does give me more time with Thomas. I loved my dad, but I didn’t want to be gone as much as he was when I was growing up.”

She looks around. The last time Ashara saw Thomas was a little while after he was born and she’s anxious to see how he’s grown in the past year or so. “Where is your son, anyway?”

"He was getting fussy so Michael’s putting him down for a little nap before the ceremony. I just thought I’d come up here and get some time to think.”

"I get that,” she agrees. “There’s a lot of memories here.”

Ashley looks back out at the gardens. “The first time I came here, it was a bit of a shock. I hadn’t really spent much time with rich people or aliens, and there were more of both here then I’d ever seen in one place. Now, it all just seems normal.”

“Amazing what you can get used to, I guess. Do you really think this was how I pictured my life when I was twelve?”

“I wouldn’t imagine so. You complaining?”

“Not anymore. I mean, there were some parts in the middle that I could’ve done without, but what I’ve got now, I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

Ashley smiles. “Well, you earned it. And I know what you mean. I joke but Michael and Thomas and my career; I couldn’t ask for more.” She pauses before changing the subject. “By the way, since we were talking about strange things you get used to, have you seen Wrex yet? I haven’t caught up with the old bastard since the leviathan battle.”

“Just for a few minutes at the meeting. He’s making a speech this afternoon though.”

The admiral groans, exaggerating for effect, the commander suspects. “A speech. Oh God. I just hope nobody’s at war by tonight.”

“Now, now, Ash,” she laughs. “Wrex has come a long way.”

“I should hope so. He used to like threatening to eat people who got in his way.”

She keeps on laughing. “I remember. And you weren’t even on Sur’kesh. Him and a few dozen STG operatives with the future of the krogan race on the line. That was quite a day.”

“Sometimes, I don’t know how you dealt with all of it, Ma’am.”

“Honestly, I don’t either,” she confesses. “I mean, sure, I usually had a plan. Well, sometimes I did. But often, it just turned into barreling straight ahead and making up the rest as I went along.”

“Wait, commander,” Ashley asks with a mischievous grin, “Are you talking about fighting the war or driving the Mako?”

Shepard shakes her head sadly. “Didn’t anyone appreciate my driving?”

“Wrex, I think,” the admiral opines, “Mostly because he enjoyed watching the rest of us get motion sickness.”

Shepard rolls her eyes. “Fine, next time we have a galactic war, you get to be the one to drive the tank.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she laughs, “Now that I’m an admiral, I can make someone else do it for me.”

“I guess I should have stuck around long enough to get promoted then,” Ashara laments. “Then I could get someone else to make this speech.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” Ashley tries to reassure the commander.

“Hopefully it will be, once it’s done.”

Her old friend raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t it in about 20 minutes? And isn’t it being broadcast to like half the galaxy?”

She puts her arm around Ashley’s shoulder, leading her off in the direction of the ceremony. “Why do you think I want to delegate?”

 

Fortunately for Ashara, they’re saving her speech for last, which buys her a little more time to figure out what she wants to say. It’s not easy to concentrate on that, though, because while she might have been complaining about her meeting with the other VIPs, she really is interested in hearing them.

Primarch Victus gives a solemn tribute to Captain Bailey and the rest of the C-Sec officers who gave their lives so that at least some of the civilians could escape the Reaper takeover. Wrex, in spite of Ashley’s worries, gets everyone to laugh by discussing the history of statues on the Presidium. Admiral Hackett, finally persuaded to retire, pays tribute to casualties of the First Battle of the Citadel, a conflict sometimes forgotten amid the cataclysms that followed it.

Presiding over it all is Councilor Tevos. She’s the last of the old Council still serving, and so it seems fitting that she should be here when it returns to the Citadel. It’s not that she’s Shepard’s favorite person. Few things ever enraged her more than the Council’s refusal to take the Reaper threat seriously, and being here with her, Ashara can still feel some of the old anger. She tries to let it go. Unlike others she can think of, at least Tevos owned up to the mistakes she made, and has done what she can to make up for them.

Hackett finishes his speech to a fine round of applause, and it’s Tevos’ turn to take the stage once more. “While all who have spoken here today are heroes, ” she says, “There is no one more renowned, nor more deserving of that renown than our final speaker. I could spend many days simply recounting her deeds, but I am certain that everyone here, and indeed, everyone watching is familiar with them, so I will simply say that it is my very great honor to introduce the Hero of the Galaxy, the woman who destroyed the Reapers, Commander Ashara Shepard.”

As she stands, the applause nearly deafen her. The first few months after the war, she was so weighed down by her regrets over the things she felt she could have done better that this kind of adulation was hard for her to bear. Now, she’s more at peace with it. She still feels like she gets too much of the credit, but after seeing how the galaxy has bounced back since the victory, celebrating her role in it doesn’t make her cringe anymore.

Walking across the stage, she shakes the old asari’s hand before stepping up to the podium and looking out at the crowd. It’s quite the assemblage; many of the people here she knows, some she doesn’t. Politicians, generals, and admirals, veterans and heroes, her old friends, and in the middle of them all, her wife and daughter are all spread out before her, and as she looks down at the crowd, she finds the words coming to her naturally, the way they used to before a battle.

Raising her hand for quiet, she still has to wait a while for the cheers to die down enough for her to speak. “When I first heard that the Council wanted to rebuild the Citadel,” she begins, “I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. People died here. It wasn’t the only place where they died, but this was different. The Citadel was…”

She thinks of Vigil’s words on Ilos, all those years ago. “It was the heart of our civilization. It was the heart of countless civilizations before us. And it was the trap that destroyed them and that almost destroyed us.”

“And it was a battleground. Three times, our enemies tried to take this station and the third time, they succeeded. I’ve fought on more worlds than I can count, but the things I saw here on the day the war ended still horrify me. Millions of innocent people were murdered by the Reapers on this ground. Some of their bodies lay where we’re standing today. Some of them were my friends. None of them deserved to die like that. There are more ghosts in this place than I can even count, and I felt they should be allowed to rest.”

She pauses, gathering her thoughts before she continues. “A part of me still feels that way. But this place is more than just the slaughterhouse the Reapers turned it into. It’s also a reminder that we’re still here.”

“The Reaper War was the greatest ordeal that any of our species’ have ever fought through. Every one of us who lived lost people and things that we cared about. We will never forget them. We will never fail to mourn our losses. But we’re still here.”

“Whatever they threw at us, we never gave up. Together, we persevered. We endured. And out of the ashes of that war, we reclaimed the things that mattered most to us. The quarians took back their home. The krogan took back their future. And all of us took back control over our own fates.”

“The Reapers told me that their harvest was inevitable. That we were dust struggling against the cosmic wind, doomed to be blown away. But we proved them wrong. They may have shaped our development, but now, we make our own future. They may have built this station, but we own it now and we’re the ones who took it and used it to power the weapon that destroyed them.”

“I know I get a lot of the credit for our victory, and I’ve largely given up on trying to fight that.” There are a few laughs at that, and she continues, “But what I did here on that day wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of countless other people living and dead. It was the protheans who left us the plans for the Crucible. It was my brilliant asari bondmate who found them. It was the scientists and engineers of all our species who helped to build it and all of our armies and navies that fought and bled so that we could deploy it. And that’s what being here should remind us of. Of what we can achieve when all of us work together.”

“In the years ahead, there’ll be new challenges, problems that we may not have even thought of yet, but whatever they are, we’ll be there to face them. Together. Because in spite of everything, we are still here.”

The applause washes over her once more, but this time, she isn’t listening to it. Instead, she’s looking out at her friends, at Garrus, and Tali, and Kelly and James. At Javik and Elphi. At Ashley and Michael with their son on his mother’s lap. At Wrex and Eve, with their brood of fidgeting children. At Jack holding Miranda’s hand. And most of all, at her wife and daughter smiling up at her. They’re still here and so is she.


	27. Final Checks

Garrus takes a bite of his dextro cheese and laughs. “I really can’t believe you were willing to host another party after the mess we made last time.”

“Well, I’d like to think that at least some of us are a little bit older and calmer,” Shepard tells her old friend with a wry smile.

“And just in case,” Liara adds, “If there is a disaster this time, it will be the restaurant and not Shepard who has to clean it up. The Council just gave her that new apartment; destroying it would be unfortunate.”

Shepard kisses her bondmate on the cheek. “An excellent point, Li,” she agrees, “You do not want to know what the cleaning bill for krogan vomit looked like last time.”

“Heh,” Grunt chortles, taking a big bite out of a leg of roast something, “That was a good party.”

"It was a good apartment too,” the turian adds. “Tasteful décor, good sight lines… It’s a shame you blew it up, Shepard.”

"You know, Garrus,” Samantha Traynor chimes in, “Now that you bring it up, I’ve been wondering about something. That place on the Presidium must have cost an incredible fortune. Where exactly did Admiral Anderson get that kind of money on a civil servant’s salary?”

"The possibilities are endless,” Tali deadpans, setting down a tray of bread on the table between them. “Running a slaving ring. Taking kickbacks on government contracts.” She raises her eyes suggestively. “Selling secret tapes of the _Normandy_ crew in the shower.”

"I think we would have seen those turn up on the extranet by now,” Ashara laughs. “Frankly, this may be one of those question that’s better off left unanswered.” She actually considered asking Liara to look into just this mystery at one point but decided against it. Anderson died a hero. That’s enough for her.

"I guess so,” Tali reluctantly agrees, sifting through a platter of cheese for the dextro stuff.

Off in the distance, a crash rings out alongside the patter of little feet and the former Spectre frowns. “I’d better go check on that,” she tells her friends. “We may have matured, but there’s a whole new generation busy inventing ways to get into trouble.”

 

"So, are you two really considering children? Sam said you were, but it’s kind of hard to picture.”

Elphi laughs and takes a sip of her wine. “Yeah, Nel, we are. I know, it’s strange to think of Javik as a father, but he’s really grown a lot these last few years.”

A smile crosses Liara’s pretty face. “Due to your good influence I think.” She couldn’t imagine anyone having wanted to bond with the cold, unpleasant warrior she and Shepard had brought out of stasis on Eden Prime, but though he’ll never be what her wife would call a people person, he certainly has mellowed.

“What about you, Liara?,” Elphi asks. “Any plans for another kid?”

"Not just yet, I think. But someday we will. There’s plenty of time.” She’s filled with a deep gratitude as she says those words. Time was the one thing they had so little of for so long and to feel confidant in tomorrow is something she’s more grateful for than she can easily express.

"Sam and I feel the same way,” Nelia agrees, “But about having our first. The business takes up so much of our time right now.”

Liara smiles. “I can understand. It is good Shepard persuaded me to give up being the Shadow Broker a few years before we had Moira.”

"Do you miss it?”, Tali inquires, joining the three asari, “Knowing everyone’s secrets must have been exciting.”

“At first, it was an adjustment,” Liara concedes, “But I am glad I no longer spend my days submerged in the grubbier side of the galaxy. In truth, I was always happier being an archeologist than an information broker.”

Indeed, she’s given up virtually all of that type of work, instead restarting her old career. For now, she mostly lectures and writes but when Moira is older, she plans to go on more digs. Shepard has even told her she’d like to come along on some of them; it’s not why she fell in love with the Spectre, but having a bondmate who’s interfaced with multiple prothean beacons is a lovely bonus for the archeologist.

"What about the Savior of the Galaxy?”, Nelia asks them playfully. “Is she still happy at the academy.”

"She certainly seems to be,” Elphi chimes in. “You can just see the way her enthusiasm rubs off on the students.”

Liara’s face lights up at the other asari’s words. She has always admired the effect that Ashara has on the people around her and it still makes her proud that someone so charming chose to be with her. Seeing her smile, Nelia shakes her head in amazement. “Goddess, Liara, I hope Sam and I are still that happy when we’ve been together as long as you two. You know, every time I talk to anyone from the _Normandy_ , they all go on about what a perfect couple you and Shepard are.”

Liara blushes slightly. “It is not as if Shepard and I do not have our disagreements.”

"Not that I’ve seen,” Elphi tells her.

"Well, we are generally good at talking them out before they become visible to others,” she explains. “Beyond that, we enjoy the interests we have in common together, and give each other space to do the things that only interest one of us.” She smiles and shrugs. “I would not claim to be an expert on relationships but that has worked out well for us.”

"You’re leaving out the part where you two fuck each other silly on a regular basis.”

"Father!”, Liara snaps at Aethyta as the matriarch joins their group.

"Ooh, do you have details?”, Tali asks hopefully. “I can never get her to give me details.”

"Nah,” Aethyta says, “But whenever I bring it up, she blushes, so the sex must be really good.” Liara is certain that she’s turning a particularly dark shade of blue right then. She’s gotten more comfortable with the subject of intimacy over the years, but that doesn’t mean she wants to talk about it with her father, even if Aethyta is right.

“Yeah, that’s what I was talking about,” the old asari notes with an evil grin. “Hey, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, kiddo. You find somebody you love like that, it should be mind-blowing. Helps to keep things running smoothly.”

"I am not going to talk about it,” Liara insists. “What about you, Tali?”, she asks, highly anxious to change the subject. “Have you been seeing anyone?”           

"I have,” the quarian answers, “But no one seriously. More like a few people on and off.”

"See, that’s good,” Aethyta says approvingly. “You’re young. You should be having fun, not settling down just yet.” She raises her eyebrows in Liara’s direction. “I’d have told my daughter that if I’d been around when she was growing up. A hundred years of nothing and then getting bonded wouldn’t have been my recommendation.”

"Well, I am extremely happy with how things worked out,” the archeologist protests.

Aethyta waves her hand dismissively. “You got lucky.”

Liara takes a sip of her wine, letting a smile return to her face. “I really did.”

 

"Is everything okay with Moira?”, Miranda asks the commander as she nibbles on her salad. “It sounds like there was some trouble.”

"Oh, nothing too serious. She and a couple of Wrex’s kids just decided to try and break into the kitchen to get a sneak preview of dessert. Bakara is keeping them in time-out for a little while.”

Jack chomps away nosily on her dinner roll. “I wouldn’t mess with that krogan. She’s got this stare… I bet she could’ve gotten even little me to behave.”

"Hey, anyone who can keep the krogan in line has got to be tough,” Ashara says.

"True enough,” Miranda agrees. “I remember the difficulties we had trying to keep Grunt from trashing the ship . And when we put him and Wrex together… God, remember that last time we were here on the Citadel?”, Miranda asks. “When they got into the head butting competition?”

Shepard gives her old XO a quizzical expression. “I didn’t think the party got that wild. I mean, there was some drinking, sure, but nothing like that.”

"Oh, it picked up after you and blue headed off to bed,” Jack informs her with a smirk. “It was easier for us kids to get into trouble without ‘mom,’ around to keep an eye on us.”

"Well, that would explain the vomit on the carpet and the number of hung over people strewn around the apartment the next morning. I’m just lucky the Reapers didn’t pick that day to attack the place.”

"And I’m just lucky I don’t get hangovers,” Jack responds smugly, “Cause I had plenty of fun.” She looks over at Miranda, a devilish expression on her pretty face, “Of course, if I’d known how hot you were for me, babe, I could’ve been having even more. A quick fuck on the pool table, maybe…”

Miranda rolls her eyes. “Classy as always, Jack.”

"Hey, you know you love me.”

The operative gives her girlfriend a quick kiss. “I do.” In truth, she’s not sure how she would have gotten through the last year and a half without Jack. The woman might be a pain in the ass, but she’s also been there for Miranda, holding her when she needed to be held, fucking her how she needed to be fucked, and generally putting up with all shit that comes with losing someone you love.

"Well, I’m glad you two found each other,” Shepard tells them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but back in the old days, I worried about both of you.”

"Hey, I’d have worried about me too,” Jack agrees.

"Sometimes, it’s those you don’t expect who get into trouble,” Miranda argues. “I still can’t believe Jacob’s marriage fell apart so quickly and that in three years he’d have run back to military work.”

"I can believe it,” Jack disagrees. “That guy may have talked like a straight lace, but he spends his whole life doing one kind of black ops shit after another and then he’s just gonna do corporate security bullshit and play house with some civilian chick he stumbled over along the way? Not fucking likely. Brynn’s the kind of girl that looks good when you’re getting shot at all time, but long term, people like us need somebody a little more interesting.”

"Well, you are that,” Miranda agrees, wrapping an arm around her lover and feeling as good as she has in some time. While she does wish that Jacob had been able to be here tonight, it does her good to see everyone else. She still has Jack, and she still has friends. She may have lost a lot, but not everything. Not by a long shot.

 

"So, how exactly did you end up running Omega, Garrus?”, Wrex asks. “That place nearly killed your bony ass the last time around.”

"Hey, you know me,” the turian tells his old comrade, “Too hard to kill and too hardheaded to learn my lesson. Besides, I’m not exactly in charge of the place. More like trying to keep a lid on the worst of the problems there.”

"Still,” Ashley tells him, “I’d like to hear more about it. I mean, I saw the reports the Alliance wrote up on the battle, but we all know that most of the good stuff isn’t in the official version.” True enough, Garrus thinks, though a lot of this particular story wasn’t exactly good.

“So,” he begins, “The funny thing is that I was only there by accident. The turian fleet had been tracking these pirates who’d been wrecking havoc in the Terminus systems until mysteriously stopping for no clear reason. We followed them to Omega and it turned out that they were part of an invasion fleet. This ex-Cerberus asshole named Petrovsky who took the station from Aria for a while during the war had turned back up to try and finish her off. His ships shot us down and we crash landed into the middle of a war zone.”

"Hardly the first time you did that,” Wrex opines cheerfully. “That used to be our specialty back in the good old days.”

"I’d like to point out I only got shot down the once,” Cortez objects while sipping his drink, “And none of you were even on the shuttle at the time.”

"You’re off the hook, Steve,” Garrus agrees. “Now, if everyone is done interrupting me…” The rest of the table quiets down and he continues, “Somehow, Petrovsky had found a way to turn off the station’s defenses, and once his troops landed, Aria’s position was pretty desperate. She decided her best bet was to overload enough of the reactors to blow up the sections of the stations where the invasion force was landing.”

"A solid stratagem,” Javik says with no trace of irony. “One must be prepared to make sacrifices in order to achieve victory.”

"What about all the innocent people who would have been killed,” Traynor protests.

"Innocent people? On Omega?” Wrex snorts. “Not likely.”

"Well, be that as it may,” Garrus continues, “Samara, who was there hunting some fugitive, got wind of this plan and she and Aria had it out. I didn’t see most of the fight, but evidently Aria won, because when I came in, Samara was pretty badly hurt. I’d hooked up with a turian woman named Nyreen, who ran a vigilante gang called the Talons that was also fighting the invasion and the two of us managed to kill Aria before she could overload the reactors, but that still left us with Petrovsky.”

Of course it wasn’t nearly as easy as he made it sound. Nyreen had once been Aria’s lover, and their battle had been brutal. In the end, Garrus had been the one to take the kill shot, putting a bullet through the old asari’s head an instant before her biotics would have turned Nyreen into a smear on the deck.           

“Afterwards, I took Samara to this med-clinic run by an old student of Mordin’s while Nyreen scouted out the invasion force. When I got there though, the doctors were either dead or in hiding and I very nearly got taken out myself by the salarian assassin responsible. Fortunately, I was saved by none other than the _Normandy_ ’s own Miss Kelly Chambers.”

Shepard’s former assistant blushes at the praise but she deserves it. Her hands may have trembled when she clocked the salarian in the back of the head with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, but without Kelly, Garrus wouldn’t be here to tell this tale.           

“Nice work, Kelly,” Sam tells the psychologist. Over the course of the evening, the two women seem to have bonded over their shared experience of sorting through Shepard’s junk mail.

Kelly’s blush deepens. “Thanks. I was just glad I could help.”

"You did,” Garrus affirms before adding on a much sadder note, “But It was too late for Samara. Her internal injuries were too severe for us to doing anything but make her comfortable before she died.”

Grunt nods approvingly as he finishes wolfing down a mighty mouthful of some Earth food that Shepard once told them was called pizza. “She was a great warrior. It is good that she died in battle.”

"To Samara,” Kelly says, raising her glass and everyone at the table drinks to the Justicar’s memory. The asari never had a full funeral. She hadn’t wanted one. Her last request had been to have her body sent to the monastery when her daughter lived so that she could have a simple grave alongside Rila’s.

"So what happened with the invasion?”, Sam asks. “Last I heard, this Petrovsky doesn’t run Omega so how did you stop him?”

"Assassination,” Garrus says quietly. “It cost a lot of people their lives but Nyreen and I managed to get through the lines and take out the general.” After another hell of a battle, the turian thinks. Petrovsky had taunted him as her fought his enforcers, telling him that his career was a long litany of failures: in C-Sec, on Omega, on Palaven; that all he’d done was ride Shepard’s coattails to glory he didn’t deserve. The general might not have been entirely wrong about that, but whatever his failings, Garrus had at least known how to take a beating long enough to distract him while Nyreen killed the bastard.

"Petrovsky was the one who had put together the plan,” he explains, “And without him, all the mercs and ex-Cerberus soldiers and everyone else he assembled fell on each other. In the chaos, the locals were able to pull together long enough to push out what was left of the invasion force. After it was over, I decided to stick around and help Nyreen try and make some improvements there. The place isn’t going to turn into Thessia overnight, but it doesn’t have to be quite such a shit hole.”

"It’s a waste of time if you ask me,” Wrex declares. “Omega is Omega. It doesn’t change.”

"Kind of like how the krogan will never change?”, Shepard asks mischievously, the former Spectre coming over to the table with her daughter.

"That’s different,” Wrex grumbles, although without trying to explain why.

From behind him, Garrus hears a voice both familiar and strange. “Well, I think it’s good you’re trying to fix Omega,” Tali tells him. “Never give up.” It’s strange to hear her without the suit’s voice modulator but he’s grateful for the unambiguous friendliness in her words. There were times he feared they’d never get back to that, and he’s glad he was wrong.

“To never giving up,” Shepard agrees, hoisting a glass. “And to those who never did.”

Moira lets out a little cheer at her father’s toast and as the rest of the table picks up their glasses, Garrus agrees that that’s something he too can definitely drink to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Garrus’ story has been hinted at before and is a telling of what was going to be The Battle for Omega, but since there was minimal interest in that, I decided to just sum it up here instead. As for the rest, I hope you enjoyed this last look at the crew together. There’s just one more chapter to go, which will focus on Shepard, Liara, and Moira.


	28. A Sort of Fairytale

“Can you tell me a story, Daddy?”

Shepard smiles indulgently at her daughter, impressed by the amount of energy she still has after all the running around she did at the party. “You’re really not tired out yet?”, she asks.

Moira looks up at her with those cute little blue-green eyes of hers. “Please.”

“All right,” Ashara agrees. “But just one, and then its off to sleep.” The commander helps the little asari into her pajamas and tucks her under the sheets before sitting down on the bed. “So, what kind of story do you want to hear?”

"An adventure!”, Moira declares. Her daughter loves adventure stories. She reminds Ashara of herself when she was a girl, always dreaming of stowing away aboard the next freighter out of Mindoir and heading off to see the galaxy. Still, she reflects, the stories she read didn’t prepare her for some of the places she visited. The lost planet of Ilos, the Collector base, the Citadel… She smiles once more as the story she wants to tell takes shape in her mind.

"Sure thing,” she agrees, “An adventure it is.” Taking a breath, she sets the scene. “Once upon a time, there lived a brave princess.”

"Did she live in a big castle?”, Moira asks knowingly, already wise as to the patterns of such tales.

"She did when she was little,” the commander tells her. “But this princess didn’t want to spend her whole life in that castle. No, this princess wanted to travel. She loved to visit distant worlds, sailing from one end of the galaxy to the other to see old things and meet strange people.”

"One day, though, she found herself in trouble. On a planet filled with fire, there was an ancient cave that the princess wanted to explore, but while she was there, she was attacked by a gang of metal soldiers led by a big, viscous ogre.”

"Why did they want to hurt the princess?”

"They wanted to kidnap her,” Ashara explains. “The metal soldiers had been sent by the Horned Knight, the toughest, meanest bad guy in the whole galaxy. He thought the princess knew where to find a secret doorway that he needed for his evil plans.”

"What evil plans?”

"So many questions,” Shepard laughs. “Just like your mom. The princess didn’t know about the plan yet, so you don’t get to know either. Anyway, the metal soldiers had come to take away the princess, and even though she was smart and strong, there were a lot of them so she ran away and hid in a secret part of the cave that the bad guys couldn’t find. Unfortunately, when she got in there, the rocks collapsed behind her, so she was trapped.”

Moira’s little eyes widen. “How did she escape?”

"Well, it just so happened that the Horned Knight wasn’t the only one searching for the princess. A brave warrior had come into the cave as well. She needed the princess’ help to stop the Horned Knight so she and her friends, the grumpy troll and the pretty archer, came looking for her. They destroyed most of the metal soldiers and they found the princess stuck behind the rocks.”

"The princess had been in that cave a long time and she was hungry and tired and thirsty, but when the warrior saw her, she still thought she was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen.”

"Really?”

"Most definitely,” Shepard grins. “So, the warrior and her friends dug the princess out from behind the rocks and together, they went to leave the castle.”

"What about the ogre?”

"Aren’t you the smart one,” she laughs, patting her daughter on the head. “Indeed, they were almost outside when that ogre caught up with them and he said,” she lowers her voice to a growl before she continues, “‘Give me the princess, or I’ll eat all of you up.’ The warrior, though, she wasn’t going to give up the princess to that mean ogre.”

"So, was there a big fight?”

"Oh, yeah. The ogre was big and tough, and he had a bunch more metal soldiers with him. The pretty archer and the grumpy troll destroyed a lot of them, but in the end, they were both knocked out and it was just the warrior and the ogre left standing. With a mighty blow, the ogre threw the warrior off of her feet and started chasing her around the room.”

"Was she scared?”

"She might have been a bit little worried, but fortunately, she knew all about how to deal with ogres. They taught her that back in warrior school,” she explains solemnly. “When he got close again, she used her magic powers to lift the ogre off of his feet. He was really angry, but when he was floating in the air, he couldn’t eat anybody, and so the warrior could slay him with her magic wand.”

"They weren’t safe just yet, though. When the warrior dug the princess out, she had damaged the cave and it was starting to fall down. So she woke up her friends, took the princess by the hand, and together, they ran out as fast as they could. Rocks and fire were crashing all around them, and the warrior and the princess had to duck and weave to stay alive. Fortunately, the warrior’s ship was waiting outside and in the nick of time, they all jumped on board and escaped.”

"Did they go and get the Horned Knight next?”, Moira inquires.

"Eventually they did. But that,” Ashara tells her, “Is a story for another time.”

"Aw, I want to hear more now.”

"Another time, blueberry,” she repeats, giving her daughter a goodnight kiss. They have plenty of time, she thinks as she turns out the lights. All the time she needs to tell stories, and teach Moira how to fight ogres, and do everything else a family should get to do together.

Ashara closes the door but before she turns around, she feels a warm pair of hands run along her body. Liara has changed into a silky, silver nightgown, and as the smooth fabric presses up against her back, the asari kisses her neck.

“Mm,” the commander sighs happily, turning in Liara’s arms so that she can give her bondmate a proper kiss, “Just how long have you been out there listening?”

“Long enough,” the asari purrs, taking Shepard by the hand and leading her towards their bedroom. “You know,” she adds with a laugh, “That fairytale you were telling Moira sounded familiar somehow.”

“Really?”, Shepard replies innocently, “I guess I might have included a few elements from real life in there.”

Liara smiles mischievously. “The most beautiful thing you ever saw?”

“You absolutely were.” Ashara closes the bedroom door and pulls her wife into her arms. “And you always will be.” Liara gives her another kiss, but when it breaks, there’s a tear running down one cheek. The commander brushes it away gently. “Everything okay?”

“It is,” the asari replies. “I was just thinking about the journey that we took to get here.”

“It was a hell of a ride.” She strokes the tips of the asari’s crest. “I love you, Liara. With all my heart.”

“I love you too.” Slim fingers start working on the buttons of her dress shirt as dark blue lips make their way up her neck. “Not that there weren’t a few bumps along the way,” Liara adds as she keeps kissing her bondmate. “Rogue Spectres, Collectors, the Shadow Broker, the Reapers, the Leviathans… It is true what you said tonight: it’s a good thing both of us are too stubborn to give up.”

“Give up?” Ashara shrugs out of her jacket and pulls her undershirt up over her head, “Never. This is way too good to let go of.”

Liara cups her bare breasts, coaxing the nipples to full hardness with a few skillful strokes. “Well, whatever I learned on this particular topic, you taught me.”

“You were an excellent student.” Shepard pulls her wife closer her, leading her towards the bed while her hand runs along the side of the asari’s forehead. “And don’t be so modest. I learned a few things from you as well.”

“Oh,” Liara whispers back, darkness starting to fill her eyes, “Like this?”

“Mm hmm,” Ashara agrees, her thoughts relaxing automatically to let her bondmate in. She feels Liara’s mind twinning with her own, but instead of forming a mating meld focused on sharing thoughts and physical sensations, the asari instead delves into their memories. Unlike some of the times she’s done this, Liara doesn’t emphasize a single experience but instead brings together the strands of their past into a sort of sensual collage.

_The tentative yet eager touches of Liara’s hands on Ashara’s naked body during their first night together… The heat in their kisses as they celebrated Shepard’s victory over Saren… The fulfilled longing as they made love following their many reunions: after Hagalaz, after Mars, after the war… The night they conceived their daughter… Warm afternoons and cool nights on Thessia with the windows of their bedroom open, the two of them just happy to be alive and together…_

All of their memories join together in an overwhelming, blissful moment that slowly melts away into an amazing kiss, Liara’s tongue slipping into her mouth and lingering there as her hands tangle in Ashara’s long, blonde hair.

“God, Li,” she breathes as Liara pulls back, her hands still stroking her commander’s hair, “That was amazing.”

“It is as I said,” her wife purrs, “Being here again makes me nostalgic.”

“And you make me so wet,” she replies, her voice low and husky. With one hand, Shepard unbuttons her pants while the other takes the archeologist’s hand and guides it inside them. “You always have.”

She gasps as Liara’s fingers start to move against her, rubbing her clit through the silky fabric of her underwear. “Good,” the asari breathes into one ear, her tongue running along the outer ridge. Ashara’s back arches and Liara’s other hand returns to the soft flesh of her breasts, caressing them lovingly. Shepard’s fingers find the back of Liara’s crest, massaging the ridges between her fingers, and Liara moans into her ear. Her bondmate is so sensitive right now, and Ashara can tell she’s not the only one that the memories have left hungry for more.

Liara keeps up what she’s doing for a while little longer, her fingers moving underneath Ashara’s underwear to slip past her entrance, but just as the human is starting to feel the first stirrings of a climax blooming within her, her lover stops. “Can you wait a little longer?”, Liara asks, “I want it to be together.”

“Of course,” Ashara agrees. As good as her wife’s hand inside her was, she would rather share her pleasure with her bondmate, especially on a special night like this.

“Excellent,” A mischievous gleam fills Liara’s bright blue eyes and she takes her fingers, still damp from Shepard’s sex, brings them up to her mouth, and one by one, kisses the tips clean.

Shepard swallows hard and Liara grins. She knows how much that turns her wife on and as Ashara stares, she slides her nightgown off of her shoulders, leaving her in only a small pair of lacy white underwear.

“You really are the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” Shepard whispers, taking a moment to just drink in the sight of bondmate’s curves in the dim light of their new bedroom.

Liara smiles at her, reaching out a hand to brush over Shepard’s cheek. “Goddess, I love the way you look at me,” she purrs, and Ashara just nods as Liara slides down the human’s pants and underwear. The warmth of her bondmate’s hands on her sides spurs her to action though, and she takes the asari into her arms, moving her thigh in-between Liara’s legs. Her wife gasps, pressing herself against Shepard, and the commander leans over, kissing the already-hard blue points of her nipples.

Even as she keeps up her affections, Shepard guides the two of them over to the pleasantly spacious bed, tumbling down alongside the woman she loves. Her wife lands on top of her, kissing her neck and face, whispering endearments in her ear as she does.

Her need building, Shepard runs her hands down her lover’s bare back, sliding underneath her panties to pull them off before reaching between Liara’s legs. Her fingers move back and forth slowly over the asari’s wet opening, and as she caresses her, she can see the darkness start to return to her eyes. Not wanting to wait any longer, Liara gives Shepard a final, passionate kiss before turning around, positioning herself so that she’s lying on top Shepard with her legs spread, giving the former Spectre a tantalizing view of her sex.

The first strokes of Ashara’s tongue are slow as she just enjoys the sweet taste of her wife while letting Liara find the right angle. Once she feels the warmth of the asari’s mouth on her clit though, she dives in, first penetrating Liara with her tongue before taking her swollen bud in her mouth and suckling on it. Her wife moans and as the vibrations run through her clit, Ashara finds herself doing the same. Her whole life, she’s never wanted anyone else like she wants Liara, and the sound of her pleasure never fails to have an effect on her.

Blue fingers dig into her thighs as Liara reacts to her ministrations and before long, Ashara feels the familiar pressure once more against her mind, her wife’s desire for union becoming incredibly intense. Their thoughts flow together again, love joining with love, passion with passion, completing a circuit of pleasure given and received in turn.

Ashara feels them moving towards their peaks rapidly, primed already from the first meld, and as she keeps suckling Liara, she runs her hands over her lover’s ass, massaging the soft flesh there. It’s so sweet, her own body tingling as if she was being rubbed, and when Liara’s fingers stroke the shaft of her clit while her tongue flicks over the head, everything melts away into their bliss.

It’s hard to concentrate as the pleasure fills them, but that’s no bar to continuing, their partner’s bodies as easy to navigate as their own, their movements the most natural thing in the galaxy. Even as they start to relax from their first climax, Ashara thrusts two fingers inside her lover and the sudden addition of sensation pushes Liara directly into a second peak, her inner walls fluttering around her commander as she releases more of her delicious taste. Instants later Shepard follows, Liara’s pleasure combined with a long stoke of her tongue along Ashara’s clit more than enough to bring her along.

As they continue, Ashara loses track how many times they come, their climaxes blending together into an incredible series of peaks that pull every last ounce of pleasure from the two biotics, and by the time the meld at last fades away, neither of them can do much more than lay together in bed, panting and spent.

Breath slowly returns to them, and Ashara wraps her arms around Liara’s back, pulling her wife closer to her. The asari sighs happily in her embrace, and Shepard’s thoughts drift back to the story of their first meeting she had been re-telling that night.

“That reminds me, Liara,” she asks in-between lazy kisses planted on her bondmate’s sweaty skin, “Did I ever tell you how human fairytales usually end?”

“No, love,” Liara replies, nuzzling back into Shepard’s strong arms, sleepy but extremely happy.

Ashara Shepard smiles and, bending over, she gives her wife a soft kiss on the lips before she answers. “And they lived happily ever after.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is the end of the 4th Life saga. Though there will be some more By Night chapters from time to time, the main story is finished, and wow, it turned out to be longer than I expected. I'd like to thank everyone who's read this far for your support. This last chapter title comes from the lovely Tori Amos song of the same name and an early draft of the chapter itself is actually one of the first things I wrote for 4th Life.


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